


Fugue

by swaps55



Series: Opus [4]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Heavy Angst, M/M, POV Multiple, Panic Attacks, Songfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 62,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26652181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swaps55/pseuds/swaps55
Summary: A few minutes more and they wouldn’t have even been on the ship. The Mako was scheduled and ready for drop, both of them suited up and ready with the final checklist completed.A few minutes more, and they would have watched the Normandy burn from the surface of Alchera.But they didn’t get those minutes.Kaidan Alenko, broken and reforged.Follow up toSonata.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Male Shepard
Series: Opus [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719571
Comments: 201
Kudos: 76





	1. Across the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> POV characters include (list will be updated as needed): Kaidan, Liara, Joker, Garrus, Tali, Marc Alenko, Lora Alenko, David Anderson, Karin Chakwas, Steven Hackett. A couple of chapters may warrant specific tags that don't apply to the fic as a whole, so keep an eye on the chapter notes for more info.

**Across the Stars**

[x](https://open.spotify.com/track/5ma9pcynn2Z940FQbitwE0?si=5DFn_62ARd-kZFAfYbV1OQ)

_The first salvo hit with Shepard in mid-laugh. Kaidan had brought up Feros and the near disaster on the skybridge - when the front wheels of the Mako had hooked them over the edge and nearly sent them spinning off into oblivion. So much like Shepard to laugh remembering a moment that had nearly killed them all. What if firing those thrusters had sent them careening over the edge instead of safely away? How long would it have taken them to fall? Would they still have been conscious when they hit the ground? Or would they have smashed to pieces against a skyscraper on the way down?_

_But of course they hadn’t gone over the edge. Shepard had been behind the wheel, and gravity always followed his rules._

_Until it didn’t._

_A few minutes more and they wouldn’t have even been on the ship. The Mako was scheduled and ready for drop, both of them suited up and ready with the final checklist completed._

_A few minutes more, and they would have watched the_ Normandy _burn from the surface of Alchera._

_But they didn’t get those minutes._

_The violent, unexpected pitch of the deckplates under their feet threw Shepard right into his arms, knocking them both to the ground, armor plating scraping against armor plating, Kaidan’s helmet flying out of his hands and rolling towards the galley. He’d wrapped his arms around Shepard out of instinct._

_Why had he let go?_

_By the time they got to their feet the ship heaved again. A bulkhead exploded near the medbay, and that’s when the screaming started._

_Shepard moved like smoke. One moment he was in Kaidan’s grip, the next he was halfway to the galley retrieving Kaidan’s helmet and shoving it back into his hands. Looking after him, like always._

_The ship was dying. The CIC was open to vacuum. Joker still at the helm. God, oh god Liara, Tali and the engineers were trapped below decks._

_“You get Liara and the others. I’ve got Joker,” Shepard said. He had that look in his eye. The same one he’d had the first day Kaidan saw him in action and truly understood what his new XO was capable of._

_Shepard was born for moments like this._

_He turned away, already headed for the bridge._

_“Sam.”_

_In all the times they’d fought side by side Shepard has never hesitated after making a decision. Once he started moving he was gone without a backwards glance. Maybe he heard the fear in Kaidan’s voice. They’d faced so many moments like this together, but that was before, this was now. Now there was so much more at stake, so much more to lose._

_For the first time since Kaidan met him, Shepard hesitated._

_The two steps he took back towards Kaidan with the ship coming apart and fire erupting from ruptured fuel lines was a moment of euphoria in the middle of disaster._

_Shepard grabbed the sides of Kaidan’s helmet with both hands and clacked their faceplates together. One final moment of contact he hadn’t even been able to feel, and it was the last he’d ever have._

_“I’ll be fine.”_


	2. Waking Up Slow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life of two very happy people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of this chapter contains an explicit scene. If you want to avoid it, skip from "They’re getting better at this." to "Kaidan smiles, closes his eyes and inhales deep."

_All my nights_   
_Taste like gold_   
_Yeah, when I'm with you_   
_It's like everything glows_

[x](https://open.spotify.com/track/4NkIYlfobkqS2hALHTIUV9?si=CBrOE1YzQom0uxuHpdnvfw)

**Waking Up Slow**

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Batalla System – Nearog Orbit (-26h:31m)_

There are worse places to wake up than Shepard’s bed, worse ways to wake up than Shepard’s mouth on his.

Kaidan melts into Shepard’s embrace before even opening his eyes, lips parting around his tongue, arms circling his back as a soft sigh stirs in his throat.

“Hey, you,” Kaidan whispers as he opens his eyes into Shepard’s smile. The soft, dim light of the cabin does beautiful things to his face. He cups Shepard’s cheek with a palm.

It’s been two weeks since the inquest on Earth into the Battle of the Citadel had changed everything. It still doesn’t feel real.

Shepard is _his_. That smile is for _him,_ and him alone.

“I’m never going to get tired of waking up with you,” Shepard murmurs back and kisses him again. Kaidan drinks him in, body arching into his, claiming every ounce he can find. Things that had seemed so new and unfamiliar two weeks ago, like the way Shepard moans when Kaidan focuses on a particular spot on his throat, how ticklish he is on the underside of his arm, how easily and willingly he folds into Kaidan’s arms, already feel like a language they’ve spoken for a lifetime.

And the way Shepard kisses, deep and desperate, like their lives are at stake, holding Kaidan like he’s afraid he might slip free if his grip isn’t tight enough, is nothing short of euphoric.

Shepard gives everything he has when he fights. Why should the way he loves be any different?

Kaidan hooks a leg around Shepard’s thigh, puts a hand to his chest and pushes until he flips onto his back. When Kaidan climbs on top Shepard traps him close, flickers of blue radiating outwards from his core. Under the soft glow of dark energy, Kaidan’s nerves _sing._ Shepard does it so effortlessly, without thinking, his biotic field a natural extension of himself in ways Kaidan will always envy.

He's always held on to himself too tightly. But Shepard makes it awfully easy to let go.

They drown in each other until they can’t breathe, then catch their breath cheek to cheek. Even in this moment of reprieve, Shepard’s hands rove ceaselessly, needing to feel, needing to _touch,_ the kinetic part of him that is never still focused completely on Kaidan.

He revels in the attention.

“This is so much better than those 06:00 drills you used to run on the _Myeongnyang,_ ” Kaidan mumbles into his neck.

“Not even five yet. We could still do that if you’re feeling nostalgic.”

“No thanks. I can think of a lot more fun ways to work up a sweat.”

Shepard waggles an eyebrow and Kaidan laughs. The sound draws a happy sigh from Shepard’s throat, and he pulls Kaidan in until their lips meet again. This time it’s slower, deeper, as though they have all the time in the world and not just a few more minutes before Kaidan slips out the door and they have to pretend none of this exists.

When they part, Shepard lays his head back against the mattress and scrunches his face in mild confusion. Kaidan grins, knowing exactly what’s coming next.

“Where the fuck is my pillow?”

Kaidan points to the other side of the room, where the missing pillow sags against the wall. “You _stole_ mine in the middle of the night because you apparently tossed yours over there.”

“And you stole it _back?_ Kaidan, I needed that pillow.”

“You mean the one you yanked out from under my head? While I was asleep?”

“I didn’t have a pillow!”

“Try using me next time,” Kaidan suggests, rolling over and pulling Shepard with him. Shepard lands on top of him with a soft grunt, already kissing him.

This is why they have to get up so early. They’re not good at the getting out of bed part.

Kaidan has no plans to practice.

“You’re a pretty good pillow, I’ll give you that,” Shepard says. “But you could just ask instead of resorting to theft.”

“I’ll just beat the shit out of you with it next time,” Kaidan says through a smile. Out of the corner of his eye, the chronometer on Shepard’s desk ticks to 04:47. A few more minutes and he’ll lose his window to slip out of Shepard’s cabin undetected, as third watch starts filtering back to the crew deck and first watch begins stirring. Bad enough he’d stayed the night at all - again. He can’t keep banking on the crew not noticing an empty sleeper pod. Rumors are one thing. Substantiated fraternization charges on the heels of a pardon for mutiny are quite another.

He draws Shepard into his chest and holds him tight, exhaling deeply.

“What’s the matter?” Shepard asks, playful tone vanishing in favor of something soft, tender that sends a shiver down Kaidan’s spine.

“I don’t want to leave,” he murmurs.

Shepard runs a thumb across his cheek. “Don’t want you to go.”

Kaidan says nothing, just gazes at him. Sometimes words aren’t enough.

Good thing Shepard’s always preferred action over words. His mouth is warm, comforting, perfect against Kaidan’s. Like this is what they were each made for.

“Say it,” Kaidan murmurs when Shepard turns his attention to Kaidan’s throat, his hands doing a little comforting of their own.

“I love you.”

When the chronometer hits 04:54, they can’t put it off any longer, and Kaidan has to leave.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Batalla System – Nearog Orbit (-24h:03m)_

The one advantage of being up before first watch is getting to the coffee pot before Shepard. It’s the first time in five years of serving together Kaidan’s won that battle. There isn’t much about Shepard he doesn’t love, but his preference for coffee so black and thick he might as well just dump the grounds straight in it definitely makes the shortlist.

A smile spreads across his face as Shepard comes up behind him mid-pour. Perfectly brewed cup. One sugar, two creamers. And no trace of motor oil.

“You realize that once this honeymoon phase is over it’s going to be all-out war on that coffee pot, right?” Shepard murmurs, close enough that his breath washes over Kaidan’s ear. It’s a scorched earth battlefield tactic, with Shepard fully expecting Kaidan to surrender. It had taken him precisely one night to discover how effective a weapon his voice in Kaidan’s ear could be, and he’s already as proficient with it as he is his shotgun.

Except Kaidan’s a little tougher to take down than a merc.

“Bring your A-game,” Kaidan replies, angling a shoulder so he steps into Shepard when he backs away from the counter. It’s not much, but he’ll reclaim any contact he can, especially when Shepard leans into it for half a heartbeat before space reappears between them. “Got a taste of the promised land on two fronts and I’m gonna fight like hell to hold that ground.”

Kaidan likes to think he’s gotten pretty good at reading Shepard’s notoriously opaque expressions over the years. The one he gets now is new, little more than a softening in his eyes and a tiny quirk of his lip, but he already knows what it means.

_I would kiss you if no one was watching._

But they’re not alone. Caroline Grenado sits at a table in the mess, bleary-eyed and relying heavily on Tali’s unquenchable early morning cheer to get over the indignity of being awake. Pressly and Dr. Chakwas chat over omelets at the next table. Joker follows Addison Chase in, arguing about something to do with the _Normandy’s_ maneuverability. Judging by the look on Joker’s face, Chase is right and he’s not ready to admit it.

So instead of a kiss Kaidan sets his mug down on the table beside Tali to claim a seat before going to grab his own plate for breakfast, concealing a smile as Shepard sits down next to Kaidan’s coffee cup before someone else can fill the spot. But the seat only stayed open because Joker left it that way, choosing the one across from it instead.

Mess Sergeant Greico doesn’t need to ask before filling up two plates, one for Kaidan, one for Shepard, both prepared with the higher calorie counts biotic metabolisms demand. Kaidan takes it with a thank you and winds back to his seat, relishing in the glance he gets from Shepard when he hands off the second plate.

Perhaps the most eye-opening thing about everything that’s transpired since the inquest is how little has changed in front of the crew. The first few days after leaving Earth they’d _tried_ to hide it. Kaidan had subordinates deliver his reports. Shepard avoided Kaidan’s table at meals. They skipped the midnight snacks in the mess they’d indulged in practically since they’d met. It was only when Dr. Chakwas had pulled Kaidan aside to ask if something was wrong that he recognized how ingrained their closeness already was. The accidental touches, loitering around the weapons’ bench, being the last two at the poker table have always _been_ there. All of the things they’ve done the past two weeks to steal a few extra minutes, extra _seconds,_ are just an extension of what already existed. Now they just know what it means.

Fodder for dozens of rumors, sure, but it always _has_ been.

 _I’ve loved you for a long time, haven’t I?_ Shepard had asked on their second night together, as they lay in a pleasant tangle of limbs, his fingers buried in Kaidan’s hair. _Looking back, it’s hard to see it any other way._

Kaidan slips into his seat, knee brushing against Shepard’s as he situates himself.

Yeah. Looking back, it’s impossible to see it any other way.

Shepard isn’t the only one who gets his breakfast brought to him. Chase hands Joker a cup of coffee and a breakfast tray, but her pointed scowl is considerably less congenial. The pilot tips his cap, grudgingly, another sign that an apology is imminent and he just needs some time to psych himself up for it, as she sits beside Grenado at the opposite end of the table.

“She still got your breakfast for you, so it can’t be that bad,” Shepard comments.

Chase overhears and snorts. “Because I’m not an asshole.”

“Joker, I think she’s calling you an asshole.”

“Yeah, well, she’s usually right,” the pilot mutters, poking at his tray. When he takes a sip of his coffee he makes an impressed sound. “Alenko, I don’t know what piece of blackmail you managed to get on Shepard to take control of the coffee pot, but the entire crew thanks you.”

“Asshole,” Shepard says with a grin.

Pressly stops by their table on his way to the CIC. “Commander, when you have a moment I’ve added our final scans on Nearog to the report on Batalla.”

“Exciting,” Shepard says with a resigned sigh, taking the offered datapad. “Let me guess. Nothing.”

“More mineral deposits. No geth. No missing ships.”

Shepard skims the datapad, taking another sip of coffee. “What’s next on the list?”

“Amada system,” Pressly replies. “Alchera.”

“Your tone suggests Alchera isn’t very interesting.”

“If you like snow and ammonia, I’m sure it’s very interesting.”

Shepard glances at the preliminary data and makes a face. “Well, at least it’s something we could land on.” The glint in his eye fills Kaidan with dread. “Tali, does the Mako have a clean bill of health, yet?”

“As of yesterday afternoon, yes.”

Shepard claps his hands together. “Perfect. Then if nothing else, we’re gonna take the tank out for a spin.”

“She even managed to fix the scope so it doesn’t stick,” Grenado adds with enthusiasm. Kaidan hides a smile. Few people are as determined to impress Shepard as Grenado is. She still gets a bad case of hero-worship whenever he walks into a room, no matter how many times he’s tried to diffuse it.

Shepard tilts his head. “Always assumed Garrus was just fucking with me about the scope,” he muses.

“What I’d like to know is who gets the short straw to go down to the snow planet and test it,” Joker says. “Garrus isn’t here to be the sucker anymore.”

“I did my part by fixing it,” Tali says. “And Liara said after the Ilos trip she’d never get in a moving vehicle with you again.”

Shepard nudges Kaidan. “Guess that leaves you.”

Alone with Shepard in a tank on a snow-covered planet. Aside from the implications of Shepard getting back behind the wheel of the Mako, it sounds nice.

Maybe Alchera won’t be so boring after all.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Batalla System – In Transit (-20h:05m)_

Kaidan finds Shepard in the cargo bay circling the Mako with Dubyanski and Pakti, bobbing his head as they narrate the repair checklist. There’s a scowl on Shepard’s face but an energy in his step and a gleam in his eye that betrays his excitement.

Some people are dog people. Some people are cat people. Shepard’s a tank person.

Kaidan would be happy to never sit in it again. But if it’s their best chance to have a few hours alone he’ll suffer through the indignity.

The corner of Shepard’s lip curves into a smile when he spots Kaidan walking towards them.

“You just had to fix her,” Kaidan says with a shake of his head. For half a second Pakti looks worried he’s done something wrong, until Dubyanki chortles.

“Ms. Zorah’s mostly to blame,” he declares. “We just followed her instructions.”

Shepard grins. “She’s better than new and ready to stretch her legs.”

“In that case, I’m gonna do a diagnostic check on my hardsuit,” Kaidan informs him.

“I feel like you’re insinuating something.”

“Yeah, I’m insinuating that when you flip her over and we have to get out I don’t want to breathe methane.”

Pakti snorts.

Shepard throws a shoulder into him as he passes. Kaidan sees it coming, could have dodged. He doesn’t. Instead he takes the contact, smiling as he walks away. The warm feeling in his chest is something he never wants to let go of.

His armor is strewn across the weapons bench when Shepard finishes the checklist and joins him. Kaidan tilts his head, brow drawn as he tests the flexion in the fingers of his right gauntlet. When he’s satisfied, he looks up to find Shepard watching him, soft smile on his face.

“You’re cute when you concentrate,” he says.

Kaidan’s glances around the cargo bay out of reflex, looking to see if anyone’s close enough to overhear. But Dubyanski’s head and torso are tucked under the Mako’s belly while Pakti stands watch, handing him tools, back turned. Both chat in a hybrid of Hindi and Russian that no one understands but them.

“Relax,” Shepard says. “It’s just us.”

“Sorry,” Kaidan says with a duck of his head.

Shepard drops a hand briefly on Kaidan’s shoulder before opening his locker and pulling out the breastplate of his hardsuit. Scour marks from the Citadel mar the front. Shepard traces the shallow grooves, contemplative expression on his face.

“Haven’t worn this since Saren,” he says after a moment.

“Only been a month,” Kaidan reminds him. “Some people actually go that long without being shot at.”

“Not us.”

Kaidan huffs. “Maybe we should change that.”

“But your ass looks so nice in a hardsuit.”

The huff becomes a full-throated laugh that echoes through the cargo bay. Pakti pauses and looks in their direction.

Shepard grins as he sets the breastplate down and pulls his helmet out of the locker. “Sure am glad you think I’m funny, because I love hearing you laugh.”

“Some couples go out for romantic walks or expensive dinners, we flirt over suit calibrations,” Kaidan says with a shake of his head. He activates his omnitool to run a full scan of the power-assist systems.

“Hey, we’ve done romantic walks, too,” Shepard protests. “Not my fault you didn’t realize I was flirting.”

Kaidan smiles at the memory. “More like trying not to get my hopes up.”

The night before Shepard’s testimony during the inquest, instead of preparing, rehearsing, _focusing_ on what the Alliance was about to do to him, he’d convinced Kaidan to go for a stroll along English Bay. _I may be hard on your sanity, but you’re good for mine,_ he’d said.

Shepard still has Kaidan’s jacket hanging in his locker. It’s his now, as far as Kaidan is concerned.

“Happy with how it turned out?” Shepard asks with a raised eyebrow.

“You could say that.”

Shepard nods wisely. “What I’m sensing is I owe you a nice dinner.”

“Depends,” Kaidan says, frowning at his scan results. He needs to make some tweaks to the knee joints.

“On what?”

He smirks as he programs the adjustments. “Dessert.”

Shepard likes it when he laughs, Kaidan likes it when Shepard blushes.

“Well. Uh. How about a few MREs in my quarters tonight?” he says at last.

He should say no. They’re pushing it with how often Kaidan has been visiting Shepard’s cabin. Less sleep for both of them, too much distraction, too much risk of the crew catching on their commanding officer is spending his nights with a subordinate. But neither of them are in much of a state to resist temptation, not after waiting five years to even have the chance. Besides, with no geth in sight and no life-or-death mission in their hands…all they’ve got is time.

“It’s a date,” he says softly.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Batalla System (-17h:23m)_

Joker and Tali are deep in conversation when Kaidan approaches the cockpit. Addison Chase sits in the co-pilot seat to Joker’s right, head in her hands, trying not to laugh and failing.

“Of course they have to save the galaxy,” Joker says. “Who wants to read it if they don’t have to save the galaxy?”

“We should focus on their _relationship_ ,” Tali argues. She has her feet up on the left side console, lazily gesturing with an arm. “This is about feelings, not plot.”

“Yeah, and that’s always been the problem with those books. We actually know _how_ to hold a gun. Imagine the possibilities.”

“You may have a point,” she acquiesces with a sigh.

“You handle the feelings. I’ll handle the plot. Spoiler, they’re going to save the galaxy. And as it turns out, I have actual real-life experience to pull from.”

“Do I want to know?” Kaidan asks, coming to a halt behind them.

“They’re plotting a romance novel,” Chase says, wiping a tear from her eye. “It’s going to be _terrible_. Get this. It’s called _Forbidden Ops_.”

Kaidan frowns. “Isn’t that the book series you were reading on Earth?”

Joker and Tali exchange glances. “We’re making it better,” Tali says at last.

“With more rain,” Joker adds.

“And dancing,” Tali agrees.

“Don’t you dare,” Kaidan mutters under his breath.

“Ooh. That reminds me. I need to go ask Liara something.” Tali hops to her feet.

“Wait,” Joker says. “Do you really think she’ll…?”

“Yes,” Tali assures him. “She’ll do it.”

“Yeah, but will she do it…, uh. Sensually? This is Liara we’re talking about. You’ll tell her this isn’t a peer-reviewed journal, right?”

Tali pauses. “You may have a point. But at least it gives us something to work with!” She scoots past Kaidan and heads down the CIC hallway practically at a jog.

“What exactly are you conning Liara into?” Kaidan asks, taking over her seat.

“Neither of us want to write the sex scenes,” Joker replies.

Kaidan blinks. “And you think that Liara...will.”

“I think she’ll write a very detailed manual on where the parts go.”

“Amazing to think we all got medals just a couple of weeks ago,” Kaidan says dryly.

“Think you got more than a medal,” Joker says, keeping his gaze deliberately trained on his haptic interface.

Kaidan smacks him gently on the back of the head.

Joker smirks. “Hey, Chase, mind finding Pressly and asking him when the hell we can expect the data for the drive discharge at Anjea?”

“We discharging before we get to Alchera?” Kaidan asks.

“Yeah, but at 03:30,” Chase says, getting to her feet. “Won’t delay your outing in the drunken elephant.”

Kaidan shrugs. “Can’t blame a guy for hoping.”

Chase shakes her head as she heads down the CIC hallway. “I’m so glad I’m navy and not a marine,” she calls over her shoulder.

When she’s out of earshot Joker eyes him with a raised eyebrow. “You are counting the minutes until I clear the Mako for drop.” He holds a hand up when Kaidan opens his mouth to protest. “Lying is a bad look on someone like you.”

Kaidan chuckles a little and shifts in an attempt to get more comfortable in the chair. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were hunting for some gossip.”

“I’m always hunting for gossip.” He inclines his head. “But in your case I at least know well enough to keep it to myself. I’ll even mute the standard comm channel while you’re down there. Consider it my gift to you.”

“How generous.”

Joker shrugs a shoulder. “Far be it from me to get in the way of a good thing. Assuming I’m reading the room right and it is a good thing.”

Kaidan gazes out the shutters as the stars bleed past. “Yeah. You’ve got a good read.”

“Thank Christ, because you were really starting to bother me.”

Kaidan smiles. “Ah yes. The torture of supporting your friends when they need it.”

“You didn’t need support, Alenko. You needed someone to shove you into oncoming traffic. My task force worked really hard to give you that shove, so the least you can do is thank us by being grossly happy. Or whatever.”

“Your _task_ force _?_ ”

“Yeah. Me, Tali, Liara and your mom were very invested in the outcome of that gala.”

Kaidan stills. “Wait. What about my mother?”

Joker sinks down in his chair and tugs the brim of his hat down low on his head. “Uhhhhh. I don’t know anything about it. You’ll have to ask Tali.”

“Joker—”

Dr. Chakwas’ voice crackles over the comm. _“Lieutenant Alenko?”_

“Yes?” Kaidan asks, his gaze sharp enough to cut the helmsman in half.

“ _I’m afraid I need your assistance in the medbay. Sergeant Felawa has a broken arm and I need an assistant_.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Joker exhales and melts deeper into his seat.

Kaidan points at him. “I’m not done with you.”

“Our motives were pure,” he calls out as Kaidan heads back down the CIC hallway.

Joker’s a dead man as soon as Kaidan can wring the truth out of him. _Who the hell needs rumors when I work in a three ring circus_.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Interstellar Space (-16h:32m)_

Dr. Chakwas puts the bone knitter away as Felawa slinks out, more embarrassed about how he broke the arm than the injury itself.

“I have to say,” the doctor muses, “every time I believe I’ve seen it all, someone surprises me.”

The incident had involved the Mako’s eezo core, a set of weights, and several bad decisions.

Kaidan finds the disinfectant and starts cleaning the medical bed. “Less surprised someone tried it, more surprised it was Felawa.”

“Felawa isn’t so bad when he gets out of his own way,” she replies, then tilts her head in contemplation. “However it’s quite rare he gets out of his own way.”

Kaidan chuckles.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” she says, eyeing the disinfectant.

“I don’t mind.”

She nods gratefully. “Your help is much appreciated, Lieutenant. That was a nasty one to set without a second pair of hands. Care for a cup of tea as a thank you?”

He sighs. “It’s in Joker’s best interest if I stay for a cup of tea, so sure.”

“What’s he done now?”

“Meddled.”

It’s her turn to chuckle. “Kaidan, before you put him in stasis let me ask you something. When you first set foot on this ship, would you ever have imagined he’d care enough to meddle with your affairs in the first place?”

Kaidan’s brow furrows as she disappears into her back office and reappears with an electric kettle and a tea infuser that smells like lavender.

“I suppose not,” he says as she switches on the kettle.

Her lips curve into a smile that’s nearly as enigmatic as Shepard’s. “I daresay he probably deserves whatever you do to him. I’m merely providing perspective. Lieutenant Moreau does not make friends easily, but he has made one in you, and he places high value on that.”

Kaidan raises an eyebrow. “Seems like your expertise extends beyond internal medicine.”

She gestures grandly with an arm. “I am merely an observer of human nature. And while I have a policy of not playing favorites, I must confess a soft spot for my two most regular patients.”

Kaidan huffs.

When the tea is ready she pours him a cup and they make themselves at home in the chairs by her desk. Not often Kaidan is in the chair rather than the bed.

She scrutinizes him. “How have you been feeling?”

“Good,” he admits, and it’s the truth in more ways than one. He hasn’t had a migraine in almost a week, and he’d slept that one off curled up in Shepard’s arms.

“You’ve been sleeping better,” she observes. His chronic sleep trouble is something she’s tried to address since he first set foot on the _Normandy_.

In all honesty he’s probably not getting any more sleep than usual. If anything he might be getting less. Given a choice between sleep and Shepard he has yet to choose sleep, but what he does get is indeed…better.

“I have,” he says, trying to conceal his smile with a well-timed sip of tea.

She arches an elegant eyebrow. “I have my suspicions as to the remedy, but am content with merely knowing that whatever your self-imposed treatment regimen is, it’s working.”

Kaidan’s brow furrows. He opens his mouth, but she holds up a hand.

“I don’t want to know, Lieutenant,” she says, kind but firm. “If you keep it to yourself, I avoid being in an awkward position and we won’t need to exchange good tea for good brandy.”

“Fair enough.”

She offers a demure smile. “Though you should know the rumor mill is purring right along.”

“It always does,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. To his relief, she drops the subject. The fewer people who even make the unspoken assumption, the better.

She’s halfway through a story about a backpacking journey she’d undertaken in Africa before medical school when the door swishes open. Joker’s face wrinkles at the sight of Kaidan.

“Ah, shit.”

Dr. Chakwas checks her chronometer. “Goodness, is it 16:00 already? My apologies. I lost track of the time. Lt. Alenko, if you will excuse me.”

“Thanks for the tea,” Kaidan says. Joker backs against the wall as Kaidan walks past him, expression wary. Kaidan pauses mid-stride, fixes him with a thoughtful look, then claps him on the shoulder.

“Wait, what?” the helmsman asks, but Kaidan ignores him and keeps going out the door. He’s going to circle back to whatever Joker knows about his mother, but for now…he’ll let it go.

Because without Joker, he might not have what he has now. And it turns out he places a high value on Joker’s friendship, too.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Interstellar Space (-13h:46m)_

Kaidan doesn’t need to deliver the duty roster in person, but that’s never stopped him before. He waits for Shepard to acknowledge his request to open the door to the comm room before entering. The channel is no longer active, but judging by the way Shepard rubs his forehead, the conversation he’d just ended hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped.

“Everything all right?” Kaidan asks when the door seals behind him. When he reaches Shepard’s side he hands the datapad over. Shepard takes it, gazes at him for a moment, then tosses the datapad on one of the empty seats, grabs the front of his uniform and pulls him into a kiss.

Kaidan makes a small sound of surprise before melting into it, arms circling Shepard’s neck.

“Hey, you,” Shepard murmurs when they part.

“Brain stopped working,” Kaidan says, dazed. “Give me a second.”

Shepard chuckles and starts to let go, but Kaidan doesn’t let him get far before finding his mouth again and tugging Shepard’s arm until it curls around Kaidan’s waist. The warmth, the _heat_ of him pressed so close is nothing short of intoxicating.

“You recover fast,” Shepard says, breathless.

“Wasn’t done with you yet.”

A grin spreads across Shepard’s face. He takes Kaidan’s chin in his fingers before drawing him close and holding him tight. “I love you,” he murmurs, then shakes his head. “Still crazy to me how easy that is to say.”

“I love you, too,” Kaidan replies.

Shepard pulls back, gazing at him with that soft, contemplative look that Kaidan can’t get enough of, and brushes his cheek with a thumb.

“Hey,” Kaidan says, running his hands along Shepard’s arms. “What happened?”

Shepard sighs. “Everything I was afraid of from the inquest. I just talked to Anderson. There’s no update to our orders. The Council’s still neck deep in damage control on the Citadel. They’ve punted us out here to keep us out of the spotlight, take the bullhorn out of my hands long enough to put whatever spin they damn well want on the reapers.”

“While still calling us heroes for being out here patrolling for geth. The ‘real’ enemy,” Kaidan surmises.

“Yeah.”

“They won’t keep us down for long,” Kaidan tells him. “You’re pretty hard to ignore.”

His smile comes back. “I’m sensing a double entendre there.”

“Sure hope so,” Kaidan says, helping himself to another kiss.

“Thank god for you,” Shepard mumbles into his mouth. “I’d be lost without you.”

“You’ve never been lost,” Kaidan says. “Just have your trajectory altered from time to time.”

Shepard exhales when they part and flops down on one of the chairs. Kaidan tries not to think about how many of those chairs remain empty now during debriefs.

“Your mom messaged me again,” Shepard says with a smile as Kaidan sits down in the chair next to him.

“Let me guess,” Kaidan says. “She saw something in a newsfeed or on the extranet that made her think of you.”

“An article on spacers adapting to planetary life,” he says, slouching into the chair and staring at the ceiling with a chuckle.

“You know what that means, right?”

“Enlighten me.”

“She’s hinting you should retire to Earth in hopes she can have at least one son who will take an interest in her horses.”

Shepard’s quiet long enough that Kaidan starts to panic he’s made a grave misstep. He sits straighter, fingers twisting in his lap. “That, uh. Came out wrong.”

When Shepard still doesn’t speak Kaidan draws in a breath. “Shepard, look I’m not insinuating you’ve walked into some lifetime commitment by being with me. I—”

“I choose you,” Shepard says, turning his head to look Kaidan in the eye. There’s something deep and steadfast in his voice, like one of the redwood trees back on Earth. “I'll choose you over and over. Without pause, without a doubt, in a heartbeat, I'll keep choosing you.”

Kaidan huffs, lump in his throat. “You even remembered the quote.”

“Been in my head ever since you said it.” Shepard’s face grows solemn. “Kaidan, I’m not going to lie and tell you I’ve thought about what my future looks like. It’s always been…safer not to look that far ahead. But this isn’t some casual fling. Not for me, anyway. I know exactly what I’m getting into. I know you better than I know myself, and no one knows me better than you do. Whatever future I might have…it’s with you. As long as you’ll have me.”

Kaidan swallows. “I…feel the same way.”

“Good.”

But Kaidan doesn’t share his apparent satisfaction. He shifts in his chair, frowning. “So…why do I get the feeling I upset you?”

Shepard shakes his head. “You didn’t. I just...” He falls silent again, then sits up in the chair and rounds his shoulders, staring down at his hands. The gravity well shimmies, standing the hairs on Kaidan’s arms on end as Shepard reaches out with an invisible hand to toy with it.

“Sam.”

Shepard finally looks at him. “Your mom. She sends you messages like that all the time.”

Kaidan nods. “My inbox is always full of them. Everything from migraine remedies to recipes to turian fashion, because I made a passing comment once that Garrus must have forgotten to pack clothes since I almost never see him out of his armor.”

“And now she’s sending them to me.”

“Yeah,” Kaidan says, heart twisting. “Her way of adopting you into the family.”

Shepard’s Adam’s apple jumps. “I…wasn’t expecting that.”

Kaidan reaches out a hand, holding it stubbornly aloft until Shepard takes it. When their fingers interlace Kaidan squeezes, marveling at how Saren couldn’t even slow Shepard down, yet the mere possibility of family stops him in his tracks.

One more piece to fall in love with.

“Welcome to awkward family dinners, forty-year-old squabbles and a constant stream of extranet articles landing in your inbox.” He gives Shepard a wry smile. “Choose me, choose my mess.”

“I’ll always choose you. No matter what the mess.”

“In that case,” Kaidan says with a grimace, “I think I should tell you I have a terrible feeling about just how...meddlesome our crewmates might have actually been in Vancouver.”

Shepard raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Joker said something about my mother being part of their task force to shove the two of us together.”

Shepard chuckles, covering his face with his free hand. “Fuck. Do you think she knew the truth?”

“That we were letting her believe we were together when we weren’t? I don’t know _how._ But I intend to strangle our pilot to find out.”

“Well, even if she thought we were lying, seems like she took it pretty well.” Shepard gets to his feet and pulls Kaidan up with him, never letting go of his hand.

“Yeah, but does that mean she knows we actually _are_ together now? Does my _dad_ know all this? And if they think I was lying why—”

Shepard tugs Kaidan into his chest and kisses him. When Kaidan finally gets a chance to catch his breath, they rest their foreheads together.

“You were thinking _way_ too hard,” Shepard says.

“Yeah. Ok. Guilty.” Kaidan cradles the back of Shepard’s neck with his hand, fingers idly tracing the small protrusion of his amp. The hum of his biotic field reverberates through him, a steady thrum that is so definitively Shepard, now so definitively _his._ A connection so alien, yet so _human_ at the same time.

“By the way,” Kaidan murmurs. “That’s _two_ confessions of love you’ve given me that I’ll never be able to top.”

“Better step your game up, then.”

The comm chirps. They both tense.

“What,” Shepard demands with a sigh.

“ _Someone’s grouchy.”_

“What do you need, Joker.”

“ _Pressly needs you to approve the drive discharge protocol for Anjea_.”

“Pressly can do that in his sleep,” Shepard complains. “What does he need my approval for?”

_“Because he’s not CO. Though, I could ask him if he wants the job. Hang on.”_

“Joker.”

_“Pressly! Shepard wants to trade jobs so you get saddled with the paperwork. Approve or disapprove?”_

_“I’d like to see the Commander calc a course through an asteroid belt. No offense, sir.”_

“None taken,” Shepard mutters, as Kaidan stifles a laugh. “Fine. I’m on my way. But I’m making a pitstop for my shotgun in case you keep thinking you’re funny.”

 _“Someone’s_ really _grouchy.”_

“Duty calls,” Kaidan murmurs when the channel closes.

Shepard closes his eyes and inhales deeply. When he opens them again they’re filled with regret. “Maybe one day it won’t.”

“I’ll be here either way.”

Shepard rises tall enough on his toes enough to kiss Kaidan’s forehead before heading for the CIC.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Interstellar Space (-12h:16m)_

Kaidan is halfway through dinner before the door to Shepard’s cabin slides open and he emerges with Liara at his heels. There’s a firmness to his jaw, glint in his eye and a curl in his fingers that suggests he’s abandoning the conversation rather than finishing it, and Liara’s expression of frustration doesn’t do much to indicate otherwise.

No one else seems to notice. Joker had talked Pressly into a glass of brandy when their shift ended, and the navigator is both a lightweight and an emphatic storyteller when he loosens up. Doesn’t matter that everyone at the table was present during the Battle of the Citadel – no one tells it like Pressly does.

Dr. Chakwas, who usually waits until after 19:00 to have a drink, raises a glass of wine when Pressly recounts the speech he gave Admiral Hackett when the _Normandy_ had left Ilos to rally the Fifth Fleet.

 _That,_ Kaidan wishes he’d been around to see. Taking a mutinied ship right into the arms of the Alliance, without the CO on board, and convincing them to come to the Citadel’s aid was a feat on the same level of what Shepard had accomplished on the Citadel, and Pressly had done it without blinking.

Joker actually gets up and claps when Pressly finishes, and the rest of the table – Chase, Tali, Dr. Chakwas, Grenado and Adams – all break out in cheers.

Shepard comes to a halt, blinking at the unexpected ruckus. Liara nearly runs into him, shoots him an anxious look, and then pivots and heads for the medbay. Kaidan tries to catch his eye, but Shepard deliberately avoids him and keeps walking towards the CIC stairwell.

Kaidan is halfway out of his seat when Pressly singles him out and hands off the story baton. Kaidan almost turns it down, but the grinning faces, Grenado’s laughter and Joker’s prideful smirk change his mind.

This crew deserves moments like this, and Shepard isn’t his only responsibility.

His storytelling skills might not rival Pressly’s, and there is plenty about the attack on the Citadel he doesn’t want to celebrate, but as it turns out he’s rather fond of the hero of the story.

So he tells it, and smiles when they cheer.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System Approach (-11h:25m)_

It’s another hour before Kaidan untangles himself from the crew deck. Over the last two weeks, instead of inhaling meals and going back to work, everyone takes their time. Laughs. Inside jokes have started popping up. Competitive streaks, including the one that got Felawa’s arm broken, have flared to life. Without the strain of finding Saren weighing on everyone’s shoulders, the _Normandy_ is a whole new place. In some ways, it feels like being back on the ‘ _Yang._

Joker and Pressly leave first when word comes down the ship is preparing to enter Amada. But before Kaidan can follow them, Tali starts peppering him with questions about Earth. Now that she’s gotten a glimpse of the human homeworld, her curiosity’s been unleashed. While Kaidan puzzles over how to answer a question about insect populations, Liara emerges from the medbay and heads silently for the galley.

“Everything all right?” he asks her when she sits down with a tray.

“Fine,” she says, her usual poise firmly intact.

Tali tilts her head. “The look on Shepard’s face was the same one he has after talking to the Council.”

So Kaidan isn’t the only one who’d noticed.

“We merely disagreed about how to move forward with prothean research,” Liara replies, focusing on her food.

Kaidan frowns. It’s not often Shepard and Liara disagree period, and even rarer that Shepard would give enough of a damn about research to argue about anything.

“It was nothing,” she insists.

But it is something, and when Tali shifts the focus of the conversation to Liara’s progress on sorting through the scans they’d taken on Ilos, Kaidan excuses himself and heads towards the CIC to figure out what.

No sign of Shepard in the CIC itself, but his laugh echoes through the hallway leading to the bridge, followed by Joker’s voice. He pauses halfway there, close enough now to see the top of Joker’s cap over the pilot’s chair and Shepard’s feet propped up on the console.

The cockpit is the only place there is to stargaze on the ship, and after a lifetime spent in space, no one understands how attached Shepard is to the stars better than Joker. So with only a small pang of jealousy, Kaidan leaves them be.

He heads back down to the crew deck with the intention of scraping together some leftovers for Shepard to eat later, but stops when he finds Liara still sitting at the abandoned table in the mess, sipping a cup of tea and reading from a datapad.

“Need some company?” he asks.

Her smile is weary but grateful. “That would be nice, actually. I fear that the longer I keep going over things in my mind, the worse I make them.”

Kaidan huffs as he takes a seat across from her. “If I had five credits for every time Shepard’s told me to get out of my own head I wouldn’t need Alliance pay. Do you want to talk about it?”

She shifts in her seat, expression pensive. “I upset him. I thought he would see my point, but he did not. I…pushed too hard.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Shepard,” Kaidan says with an exhale, “it’s that pushing usually has the opposite effect.”

“He is _vexingly_ stubborn.”

Kaidan chuckles. “Why do you think he’s the one they sent after Saren?”

Liara doesn’t smile. The look in her eye is eerily reminiscent of Shepard when he’s dug in his heels. _No wonder the discussion didn’t end well._ “It is important that he listens to me.”

“He respects you, Liara,” Kaidan says. “If it’s that important he’ll listen to you. Just…plant the seed. Give him some time and space to think about it. Chances are he’ll come around, and I guarantee you when he does, he’ll tell you. He may be a stubborn ass, but he always admits when he’s wrong.”

“I hope so,” she murmurs, then forces a smile. “Thank you. You have been…good for him. The past two weeks he has been a different person. I do not know that I have ever seen him so relaxed before. I believe that may actually have emboldened me too much.”

“Think defeating Saren and getting the inquest in the rearview probably has a lot to do with that,” Kaidan points out.

“Perhaps.” She levels him with a solemn gaze. “But there is more to it than that.”

Not for the first time, Kaidan envies the melds she’s shared with Shepard. In the space of a few minutes she’d gained a deeper understanding of Shepard than most could ever hope to get in a lifetime. What would it feel like to experience someone on such an intimate level?

“He loves you a great deal, Kaidan,” she says.

Kaidan straightens in his seat, glancing around out of reflex to make sure they’re alone.

“I hope you understand,” she continues. “I could not push him to confront that. It was something he needed to realize for himself.”

The corner of his mouth curves to a half-smile. “Like I said. Have to let him come around on his own terms if you want to get anywhere.”

This time she smiles back. “He was always going to come around to you. It was just a matter of when.”

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System (-8h:57m)_

When Kaidan heads for Shepard’s cabin, container of leftovers in hand, he nearly runs into Serviceman Felawa.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Felawa says, jumping to attention. “Wasn’t expecting anyone at this hour.”

Kaidan nods curtly. He hadn’t been expecting anyone, either. “Where are you headed?”

“CIC. Working a weird shift tonight.”

“Drive discharge?”

“Yes, sir.” Felawa nods at the food container. “Checking in on the Commander?”

“You know how he is,” Kaidan replies, tone guarded. At least Shepard’s inconsistency when it comes to meals is well-known.

“Wish someone would bring me dinner whenever I skipped the mess,” the serviceman replies. There’s an edge to his voice that Kaidan doesn’t like. Felawa’s always been a bit of a smug asshole, but there’s an implication buried there that Kaidan doesn’t like at all.

 _Why? It’s true. And you knew there would be consequences to this_.

“When you get to be in charge you can order anyone you want to bring you meals,” Kaidan says. He’s mastered the art of the easygoing smile. Used it to diffuse more than a few tense moments with soldiers who weren’t fond of biotics.

“Career goals,” Felawa agrees, before saluting and resuming his trek. But Kaidan doesn’t need to look to know that Felawa glances over his shoulder a few times before he disappears into the stairwell.

Kaidan releases a breath. When he reaches the cabin and raises a hand to tap the door chime, he hesitates before going through with it. He chews his lip when the lock turns green and the door slides open.

_We have to back off._

They’ve been so enraptured with each other, so caught up in this way of existing together that if it hasn’t interfered with their duty yet it inevitably would. The lack of an imminent threat hanging over their shoulders is no excuse for being careless.

But the sight of Shepard seated at the small, round table in his cabin instead of his desk, chair next to him empty and waiting, makes it far too easy to forget all of that.

The door closes behind him.

Three datapads lay scattered across the table. Shepard stares at a fourth, brow furrowed, tapping the tabletop with a stylus, corner of his eyes pinched in concentration. The moment Kaidan walks in he looks up and the lines vanish.

Warmth floods Kaidan’s chest. How is it even possible to feel this way about another person?

“Hey, you,” Shepard says, corner of his mouth turning up in a grin. He leans back in his chair. “You’re staring.”

“You’re distracting,” Kaidan replies.

Shepard’s grin becomes a flush. “Have, uh. Have I mentioned how much I love it when you look at me like that?”

Kaidan starts to say something, but then crosses the distance between them instead, dropping the container on the table and leaning in to kiss Shepard for all he’s worth. Shepard makes a muffled sound of surprise but gets over it quickly, hooking a hand around Kaidan’s lower back to trap him in place in case he gets any ideas about straightening back up.

If they have to slow things down, he’s going to get everything he can out of tonight.

“Did you miss me?” Shepard whispers when they part.

“What gave me away?”

Shepard chuckles, the rich sound almost enough to get him kissed again. But the food Kaidan had heated up is already getting cold, and biotics need to eat. So Kaidan slides into the empty seat and fumbles for Shepard’s hand instead.

“ _How_ is your hand so fucking cold all the time?” Shepard demands, twining their fingers.

“I have to have a flaw somewhere.”

Shepard eyes the container, grinning again. “Did you bring me dinner?”

“Figured it would be better than your MRE plan.”

“You’re way better at this whole dating thing than I am.”

“Just means you get to practice.”

The grin softens. “Looking forward to it.”

Kaidan reluctantly lets go of Shepard’s hand to give him freedom to poke at the container’s contents.

“Got the initial scans of Alchera,” Shepard muses as he picks at the fried rice. “Pressly found a good landing zone for the Mako. Won’t be the heart failure Ilos was, I promise.”

“Good,” Kaidan says, mind already drifting to his exchange with Felawa.

Shepard sets down the datapad. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Kaidan says quickly. He hadn’t exactly planned to _lead_ with a discussion about toning things down.

Shepard’s eyes narrow. “Bullshit.”

Kaidan sighs. “I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me you would get _more_ perceptive in a relationship rather than less.”

Instead of comment, Shepard merely raises an eyebrow.

“I ran into Felawa on the way here,” he admits.

Shepard rolls his eyes. “Great. Felawa’s been a thorn in my side since day one. What happened?”

“Nothing we need to panic about. But.” He hesitates.

“We need to back off,” Shepard supplies, wistful but unsurprised look in his eye.

Kaidan nods. “Yeah.”

Shepard puts his elbows on the table and rubs his eyes. “Been hoping it was my imagination.” He gives Kaidan a half smile. “You’re hard to stay away from.”

“Like hearing that,” Kaidan admits. “But the crew has to trust you. We can’t risk that.”

“No,” Shepard says, shoulders slumping. “Ok. So we back off.”

They sit in glum silence as Shepard picks at his dinner. When he sets the fork down, Kaidan gets up from his chair, walks behind him, and starts kneading his shoulders. His thumbs find knots of tension that hadn’t been there the other day. Shepard tips his head back against Kaidan’s chest and groans a little, eyes closed.

“That’s…yes. Please keep doing that.”

“Seems Liara was right, she did upset you,” Kaidan observes, deepening the pressure ever so slightly.

“Ah. She talked to you, huh.”

Kaidan leans in and kisses his temple. “She didn’t dive into details.”

He sighs, relaxing into Kaidan’s touch. “She wants to get back in my head.”

Kaidan pauses – briefly – before resuming his ministrations. “Oh?”

“Mmm.” He cracks an eye open and cranes his head to get a look at Kaidan. “See, you sound about as excited about the idea as I did.”

“What’s her reasoning? She sounded pretty convicted.”

Shepard snorts. “Stop if you’ve heard this one before. I am a unique individual who’s been given a great gift. I not only have two prothean beacons rattling around in my head, but I _also_ have the cipher. Whatever bullshit got shoved in my brain could be the key to the galaxy’s salvation.”

“But you translated the beacon message,” Kaidan says with a frown. “What more is there?”

“I don’t know, and that’s her point.”

“And you don’t want to…meld again.”

Shepard hangs his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Kaidan’s hand begins to cramp, so he flexes it before going back to the massage. “I don’t know what I want. I trust her. I guess…maybe it was nice not to have the fate of the galaxy hinge on _me_ for a few days.”

Kaidan leans in and envelops Shepard in his arms. “Can’t say I blame you.”

Shepard grips Kaidan’s arm and squeezes. “She’s probably right. Shouldn’t leave that stone unturned. I’m just not…ready yet.”

Kaidan holds him a little tighter.

“Did I catch a hint of jealousy, by the way?” Shepard asks.

Kaidan smiles, pressing his cheek against Shepard’s. “Maybe. Why? You like that I get a little jealous when it comes to you?”

“Maybe.”

Kaidan comes around to his side and pulls him up out of the chair, deliberately tugging him close enough that they’re nose to nose when he hits his feet. When Shepard’s balance wobbles, Kaidan snakes an arm around his waist.

He swears there’s something he’d wanted to say. Something he’s sure would have made Shepard grin, or even better, laugh. But this close, this _close_ all he can do is stare.

_You are mine._

He traces Shepard’s cheek with his free hand, marveling at how real it is.

Shepard swallows. “I’m scared to ask whether or not you plan to stay.”

Kaidan’s heart twists. If he leaves now, there won’t be an empty pod for anyone to notice. No story to concoct if someone catches him leaving in the morning. But as much as he needs to prove he can leave, as much as staying will only compound the problem…he doesn’t have it in him to walk back out the door. “Like you said,” he murmurs. “You’re hard to stay away from.”

Silence hangs between them, each waiting for the other to make the call.

“Kaidan—”

Kaidan crushes their lips together before he can say anything else, gripping the front of Shepard’s uniform in case he needs to state his intentions clearer. Shepard doesn’t need any further urging. He cups the back of Kaidan’s neck, giving back everything he gets and more. It’s frantic, needy, even a little angry.

Maybe they’ve earned a little angry. It took so long to get here. They shouldn’t have to give anything back. Not when they’ve given up so much. But they knew what the consequences were going to be.

Doesn’t make it any easier to live them.

When they pause for breath, Shepard’s fingers knead the back of Kaidan’s neck, their foreheads pressed together. The hand still clutching Shepard’s uniform trembles.

“Would it be better if I told you to go?” Shepard mumbles.

“I should say yes,” Kaidan says, closing his eyes. “But I can’t.”

In response, Shepard tugs at his shirt and Kaidan doesn’t stop him, instead holds his arms up to make it easier for Shepard to pull it off. It’s not even on the floor before Kaidan demands the same in return.

Like they’ve thrown a switch, the question of Kaidan leaving is done, addressed, the report written and shoved in a drawer to be forgotten about until later, when the chronometer hits 04:45 and they no longer have a choice.

Until then, he chooses this. Chooses _Sam._ The warmth of his mouth, the caress of his palms, the wash of static from his biotic field. Outside this room Shepard is Kaidan’s commander, the leader he’s walked into hell for, the symbol he believes in. But in here there’s no mantle to wear or galaxy to save.

In here, he belongs to Kaidan and Kaidan alone.

A few blind steps and they hit the bed, shedding clothes until there’s nothing left between them. Even the boots come off without incident.

They’re getting better at this.

Shepard pins Kaidan to the mattress, trailing kisses up his chest, to his throat, his neck, until Kaidan arches his back and moans. He circles Shepard with both arms, the very idea of any space between them more than he can handle.

“Sam,” Kaidan gasps. “ _Sam_.”

Shepard hooks Kaidan’s knee and tugs until Kaidan wraps a leg around him, breath hitching as Shepard finds the spot at the hollow of his throat and gives it due diligence with his mouth. Kaidan’s hands scrabble at Shepard’s spine, _more,_ he wants _more_ , knowing nothing he gets will ever be enough. Another moan slips his throat as Shepard presses his erection against Kaidan’s thigh, the sound enough to spur Shepard into doubling his efforts.

They’re getting _much_ better at this.

“I can’t get enough of you,” Shepard mumbles between kisses.

“Good, because I really don’t want you to let me go.”

In response, Shepard grinds against him until Kaidan’s eyes nearly roll back in his head. The sound he makes is soft, full of _want_ , and Shepard growls.

“Do that again.”

Kaidan sure as hell isn’t going to tell him no. Not that it’s a tough ask. More sounds slip from his throat, but he gets a few from Shepard in return when he creates just enough space between them to take them both in his hand. It doesn’t take long to find the right stroke, the right friction, for Shepard to nearly collapse on top of him.

Shepard’s kisses become sloppy, frantic, teeth nipping at the skin of Kaidan’s shoulder. His breathing turns quicker, heavier as Kaidan gains the upper hand.

But Shepard isn’t ready to surrender yet. He moves out of Kaidan’s grasp to shift his body further south, kisses trending lower until Kaidan’s entire body trembles with anticipation, pelvis thrusting up with a jerk.

“Want something?” Shepard murmurs.

“Fuck you, _yes_ ,” Kaidan says, laughter spilling out of him. “I want this, I want you, I want all of it.”

Shepard’s lips imprint a smile along Kaidan’s abdomen. One hand sweeps up and down Kaidan’s chest, the other straying lower. Kaidan’s hips buck as Shepard’s fingers find what they’re looking for, more sounds tumbling from his lips.

“Sam,” he gasps again.

“I’ve got you,” Shepard whispers, before putting his lips to better use.

They’re getting _really_ fucking good at this.

Kaidan arches into Shepard’s mouth, seizing a hand and lacing their fingers together.

 _Fuck,_ the things Shepard can do with his tongue.

There have to be words to describe the way Shepard makes him feel, but he’s given up on finding them. Instead he focuses on the somersault in his chest, the sounds in his throat, the overwhelming _need_ to have Shepard in his arms.

Kaidan had grown up dreaming of space, seeing what’s out there, doing some good. But maybe what he’d really always dreamed about was Shepard: someone born alongside the stars, whose gravitational force draws people to him like interstellar matter, until he’s bright enough to outshine the sun.

The galaxy would be lost without him. _Kaidan_ would be lost without him. But he’s coming to understand that the reverse is also true.

“I love you,” Kaidan mumbles. “Sam. I love you.”

It sounds like so little. But it means so _much._

He comes hard and fast, gripping Shepard’s hand with white knuckles as his corona flares, unbidden, and sends an electric shock through them both. It’s euphoric, cosmic, like the fusion of stars, and if Kaidan lets go he’ll be lost forever.

Shepard does not let go.

Once Kaidan’s body stills Shepard crawls back up to join him, slipping an arm under his neck and planting kisses along his throat up to his temple. Kaidan throws an arm around him, exhaling slowly, waiting for his senses to come back.

“Good one?” Shepard murmurs against his skin, using his free hand to explore Kaidan’s chest, hips, all the places that are off-limits in their uniforms.

“Mmm. Oh hey, I have toes. Neat.”

Shepard chuckles, low and quiet. Kaidan revels in the sound, basking in the tender ministration of lips and hands. But despite how gentle and slow it feels, Shepard’s hips still move with unresolved tension. A smile crosses Kaidan’s face. When he’s ready, he places a palm flat against Shepard’s chest and pushes him onto his back.

“You made a mistake,” Kaidan whispers in his ear. “Got target locked. Now that I’m good and sated I can take things slow. And Sam, it’s gonna be slow.”

The shiver that runs through him turns Kaidan’s smile into a smirk.

He makes good on his word. Shepard has never been slow, never been patient, but he’s going to learn and Kaidan is going to teach him. After all, if there’s one way he’ll always have the upper hand on Shepard, it’s control.

So he exerts some.

It’s taking them both time to figure out what they like, what they want, but Kaidan’s a good student and pays close attention to what Shepard says, with or without words.

The very clear message is that Shepard likes it _slow_. Reverent. Worshipful. _Agonizing_. It’s in the way his breath hitches when Kaidan strokes him like _this,_ a shudder when his tongue dips like _that,_ the sigh around Kaidan’s name when he caresses _just so_.

A long time ago, Shepard taught him the value of occasionally letting go. Now Kaidan teaches him the sheer ecstasy of holding on.

Sometimes the lesson requires pinning Shepard’s wrists above his head to keep impatient, busy hands from getting too eager.

That’s when Kaidan learns he can make the Savior of the Citadel _whimper_.

“You’re enjoying the hell out of this,” Shepard breathes.

“So are you,” Kaidan replies. Shepard moans his agreement.

Shepard twists his fingers in the sheets when Kaidan hums against his arousal, close, _so_ close, but not enough. Fresh heat pools in Kaidan’s gut at the tremble in Shepard’s body, the flex and pull of every muscle and sinew straining under a smooth sheen of skin.

Shepard is _gorgeou_ s _._

Want floods through him, shaping into an ever-present, undeniable ache that settles in his groin. As he puts his mouth to work, unraveling just a little of Shepard’s radiating tension, the ache grows more insistent.

There are things they’ve done, things they haven’t done. For two people who’ve never placed much value on sex they have a lot ground to cover with no rush to get there, content to learn and love and come around in their own time. But tonight feels different. There aren’t words for what Kaidan feels, but it’s powerful, over _whelming_ , more than he knows how to hold onto. He turns Shepard loose, crawls up to meet him and presses a kiss against his lips. Shepard gives it back without question, wrapping an arm around him, trapping him close.

It’s messy. Frantic. Shepard grinds against him, _I love you_ falling from his lips whenever he has breath to push the words out.

Kaidan inhales deep through his nose when they part, thumb running across Shepard’s forehead.

“Sam,” he whispers. “Do you trust me?”

Shepard’s eyes widen a little in understanding, but he nods.

Kaidan presses a gentle kiss to his forehead. “Say it.”

“I trust you.”

Kaidan kisses him again. Slower this time. Tender. Deliberate. One arm cradles Shepard’s head while the other reaches blindly for the nightstand. Lube may not have been something Shepard kept on hand _before_ , but this is _now,_ even if they haven’t taken the step Kaidan’s got in mind now. When he finally gets his hand around it he lets Shepard go, loathe to put any distance between them, even if it’s temporary.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Kaidan murmurs, trailing a hand down Shepard’s chest.

Shepard swallows, nods, desire in his eyes that sets Kaidan’s heart on fire, then leans forward and throws his arms around Kaidan’s neck, nuzzling his ear. “How do you want me?”

“On your back,” Kaidan replies, placing a tender palm against Shepard’s cheek. “Want to see your face. And that way you can talk me through.”

A slow smile spreads across Shepard’s face. As he lays back, Kaidan’s heart rate accelerates. The first time he squeezes a dollop of lube onto his hand he almost misses. The time it’s going to take to warm it in his hand is already too long.

“God, I want you,” Kaidan breathes.

“I’m all yours.”

Kaidan grabs a pillow and guides it under Shepard’s hips. “I’ll go slow,” he murmurs, cupping Shepard’s ass with a reverent hand. “All you have to say is stop.”

Shepard nods, shivers, his hitching breath devolving into a moan when Kaidan passes over his entrance with a slicked finger. Just like before, Kaidan takes his time. Plants kisses up and down Shepard’s inner thigh as he toys, tests, then, when Shepard’s breath is quick, shallow, with a jagged edge that makes Kaidan’s heart pound, slowly sinks a finger inside.

He follows Shepard’s lead just like he does on the battlefield, with a decidedly different cadence. A small part of him wonders how this would display in Shepard’s biofeeds. But there’s no blood pressure to read, no pulse to monitor. Instead Kaidan follows the jump of his hips, the quiver in his thighs, the groan that starts deep in his chest.

 _God,_ this is better.

The gravity well shifts as Shepard’s corona shimmers to life, flickering like a newly lit candle. The dark energy washes through Kaidan like the swish of silk, standing the hairs of his arms on end. His lips form a smile against Shepard’s skin.

Until Shepard, his biotics had been more of a curse than a blessing, every flare, every mnemonic so hard-earned and hard-fought. He and Shepard had both been forged from different fires, taught to wield dark energy like warriors and accept mistrust and suspicion in return.

But with Shepard, those alien nodes under his skin became a common language instead of an enemy. The mutation that made them so different also gave them a sixth sense for each other that has always been easier to feel than explain. But here in Shepard’s bed it takes on a whole new level of intimacy, an invisible connection that makes Kaidan truly _seen_ for the first time.

Seen…and accepted. _Loved_.

When Kaidan slips in a second finger Shepard fumbles for Kaidan’s spare hand and grips it firmly.

“You okay?” Kaidan asks.

He nods. “Just glad we’re going slow.”

“I’ve got you,” Kaidan whispers. Shepard arches his back in response, humming with eyes closed, squeezing Kaidan’s hand until it aches. Kaidan resumes his trail of kisses, treading closer and closer to Shepard’s arousal, reveling in the sharp sound of anticipation that spills from his throat.

“Kaidan,” he gasps, but the rest is lost when Kaidan takes him in his mouth. Shepard’s corona brightens, hips thrashing under the suck and pull of Kaidan’s lips combined with gently working fingers, head tilting back with a soft moan that hits Kaidan like a solar flare.

It’s getting harder to take his time, but Kaidan’s discipline is honed by years of dedicated hard work and it doesn’t fail him now. He nurses Shepard along until he _begs_ , legs trembling, thin sheen of sweat standing out on his skin. Kaidan lets him go and withdraws his fingers, the sudden absence of stimulation even more cruel than the slow, incessant buildup.

Kaidan returns to kissing along Shepard’s thighs, caresses each with his hands, then settles onto his knees and gently hooks Shepard’s knees over his shoulders.

“Ready?” he asks.

Shepard nods, straining to catch his breath as his corona fades. Kaidan fumbles for the lube once again, swallowing back his own nervousness. Shepard watches him with a half-drunk smile as he puts the lube to use.

“Can I be honest?” he asks.

“Now is definitely a good time for that.”

“I feel a little silly just…lubed up, ass out.”

Kaidan chuckles, tender and full of love. “Well, you look beautiful.” To emphasize his point, Kaidan presses himself against Shepard’s inner thigh. “See what you do to me?”

Shepard tilts his head back with a soft groan. “Seductive and sadistic. You really are perfect.”

Kaidan’s smile wavers, uncertainty taking hold in spite of himself. “Sam. Are you sure?”

The response is quick, definitive. “Yes.”

“I’m not pushing you?”

Shepard takes Kaidan’s own erection in hand and gives it a stroke. “Kaidan. I’m _sure._ ”

It takes a few fumbles – now Kaidan is the one who feels a little silly – but eventually he gets it right.

It’s been years since he’s even wanted to be part of another person the way he wants to be part of the man on the bed before him, who wants him just as badly in return.

Looking back, it all seems so inevitable, an unalterable trajectory written in the stars. So many times they could have missed, skipped off each other’s atmosphere and spun off into space.

Kaidan could have filed a report instead of pulling out a chair in that bar on Arcturus. Shepard could have said no when Kaidan first asked him to come to Vancouver all those years ago. Kaidan could have submitted the transfer papers after Sharjila. On Virmire, Shepard could have run the other way.

Kaidan could have let him walk away in the rain by English Bay.

But they hadn’t done those things. Every time something’s threatened to separate them, they’ve found a way back to each other.

_Like quarks._

Not long ago, while conversing about QEC technology, Tali had talked about the romance of quarks. At Kaidan’s skeptical look, she’d laughed. _They’re created together_ , she’d explained. _Uniquely tuned to one another on a quantum level. They’re_ made _for each other, Kaidan. The things that make them unique are what bond them together, literally across space and time_. _The more you pull them apart, the harder they try to snap back together._ _How is that not the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard?_

Here, now, as he slips slowly inside Shepard, he understands exactly what she’d meant.

Being part of Sam feels like finally snapping back into place, reclaiming a piece of himself that has always belonged to someone else.

_God._

“Oh, fuck,” Shepard gasps.

That works, too.

They go slow. As slow as Shepard needs. True or not, right here, right now, it feels like they have all the time in the world.

A delirious smile passes across Shepard’s face. “Did you ever imagine,” he says between ragged breaths, “when you found my sorry ass in that bar five years ago, that you’d wind up _in_ that ass someday?”

Kaidan laughs, arms tightening around Shepard’s legs. “It’s a nice ass, Sam.”

“I bet that’s the first thing you noticed.”

Kaidan raises an eyebrow before sliding in a little deeper, smirking when Shepard’s eyes roll back in his head.

Gravity had been the first thing he’d noticed about Shepard. The gravity well responds just a little bit differently to any biotic who touches it, like a unique set of fingerprints. He’s probably imagining it, all the things he feels now bleeding back into his memories in ways he can’t untangle, but he could swear that first whisper of Shepard’s biotic field had felt…magnetic. Like he’d found something he hadn’t known he’d been looking for.

 _Quarks_.

“I love you,” Kaidan says, the words pushing out before he even realizes they’re in his throat. They’re just words, words that can’t come anywhere close to encompassing what he feels, but he needs Shepard to hear them.

“I love you, too,” Shepard says, and the look in his eyes says everything the words can’t.

When Kaidan begins to thrust, slow and gentle until they both adjust, Shepard gasps out his name and grabs for his hand once more.

“Too much?” Kaidan asks.

“I swear to god if you stop I will shoot you out the nearest airlock.”

Kaidan grins, turns his head to kiss Shepard’s knees, then picks up a rhythm again.

Fuck, it’s not going to take long. Judging by the way Shepard wraps the fingers of his spare hand around himself and starts to stroke, he’s not far behind.

“Sam,” Kaidan pants as his corona kindles, limning his body in blue. It’s nothing like the smooth, controlled barrier he creates to protect himself in combat. This is disheveled, messy, tendrils of flame curling and snapping without rhyme or reason. Shepard closes his eyes, lips parted as his own aura races out to meet it, grip on Kaidan’s hand tightening.

The added thrill of Shepard’s corona intersecting with his own pushes Kaidan over the edge. He shudders, thighs quaking, seizing hold of Shepard’s leg with his free hand in an effort to keep himself up. Shepard’s hand moves faster, breath coming quicker, pelvis bucking harder.

“ _God,_ Kaidan,” Shepard manages.

Kaidan rocks his hips again, still clearing stars from his eyes, and drops his voice to a rumble. “Give me what I want, Sam.”

That’s all it takes.

Shepard hits his peak with a cry, body rigid, corona flaring like a star going nova. Once he’s spent he lays his head back against the pillow, chest heaving as the flames engulfing them gutter out and leave in their wake a pleasant echo strumming Kaidan’s nerves.

Gingerly he pulls out, hissing a little at the accompanying overstimulation, and disentangles himself from Shepard’s legs.

“Fuck me,” Shepard murmurs as Kaidan flops down beside him, still catching his breath.

“You’re gonna have to give me a minute first.”

Shepard grins, chuckles, and rolls to his side to drape an arm across Kaidan’s chest. “You’re cute.”

Kaidan smiles, closes his eyes and inhales deep. When he opens them again Shepard is watching him, head nestled in the crook of Kaidan’s shoulder.

“So,” Kaidan asks. “How was that?”

“Mmmm. You’re even better in bed than you are with a gun.”

“High praise,” Kaidan says solemnly.

Shepard answers with a drowsy smile, fingers tracing idle patterns across Kaidan’s chest. As his eyes drift closed the motions still, but the weight of his hand remains. In the quiet of Shepard’s cabin, there is only the soft hum of the air circulators, the steady inhale and exhale of breath. Kaidan’s limbs are warm and leaden, mind blissfully clear of all but one thing.

 _Sam_.

He brushes his knuckles along Shepard’s cheek, causing his eyelids to flutter.

“Hey, you,” Kaidan whispers.

There’s that smile again. _God,_ that smile. “Did I doze off?”

“Only for a minute.”

Shepard stretches his arm fully across Kaidan, hooking his fingers around his ribcage, and nestles deeper against him. “Kaidan.”

“Hm.”

“Did you know it would feel like this?”

Kaidan strokes the crown of Shepard’s head. Just a few short weeks ago, a moment like this had been so helplessly out of reach. Something to dream about, but never voice aloud.

And he _had_ dreamed about it. But the dream is nothing compared to the reality of Shepard, of _Sam,_ here in his arms, the knot that forms in his chest just at the sight of him, the euphoria when he says Kaidan’s name, the way his heart _rests_ when their limbs tangle together.

“No,” he admits.

Shepard breathes a sigh of contentment. Wriggles a little in Kaidan’s grasp, then makes a face. “Though I am rapidly discovering the downside of you being an incredible lay.”

“Which is?”

“I am very fucking _sticky_. In some _really_ weird places.”

Kaidan laughs. “Tradeoffs, I guess. What do you think the odds are someone would catch us making a break for the showers?”

“Hang on, I have something for this.” Shepard rolls onto his back and queries the ship VI. “Is any of the crew moving around the crew deck?”

_“No crew members are currently active on the crew deck.”_

“Perfect. Notify me if anyone _starts_ moving on the crew deck.” He raises an eyebrow. “We have a window. Get your ass in gear, Lieutenant.”

Kaidan climbs out of bed, hiding a snort behind his hand when Shepard staggers upon hitting his feet.

“Okay,” Shepard says after regaining his balance. “Maybe ‘get your ass in gear’ was a poor choice of words after what you just did to me.”

“Nope. Dead on.”

Shepard hurls a pillow at him.

“This is why we can never _find_ pillows,” Kaidan informs him, before picking it up and tossing it back on the bed. He crosses his arms over his chest and watches in bemusement as Shepard struggles back into his pants.

“Have your fun,” Shepard says, giving him a withering look. “Just remember I’ll get the last laugh in the Mako tomorrow.”

“Hey,” Kaidan argues as he pulls on a shirt. “I’m pretty sure I just blew your mind. Be nice to me.”

“I’m _very_ nice to you. And there’s no ‘pretty sure’ about it.”

Kaidan flushes a little in spite of himself. Once they’re dressed, they make their way quickly across the crew deck to the showers, then shed their clothes again.

“Next retrofit, you should really insist on a private shower,” Kaidan says as he twists the handle and starts the flow of water. When he glances over his shoulder he catches Shepard staring him unabashedly. It’s…flattering. He flushes a little.

“Top of my list, believe me.”

Despite the fact they’re alone, Shepard takes his own showerhead. Privacy in here is an illusion neither of them can afford to fall for.

But that doesn’t stop Kaidan from admiring the way the water flows over him, the way the muscles of his back shift when he raises his arms, the way his stomach flexes, the perfect curve of his ass where it meets the back of his thigh.

 _Fuck_ , Shepard is beautiful.

“You’re staring,” Shepard says, lips curving in a self-satisfied smile.

“Can you blame me?”

Kaidan would be tempted to linger if he wasn’t so anxious to get his arms back around him. Shepard queries the VI again as they dry off. Still clear.

Kaidan hesitates. This is his chance to go back to his pod, to do the responsible thing and put distance between them. But Shepard doesn’t ask and Kaidan doesn’t offer.

Tonight, they’re both a little too selfish to care.

They shed their clothes again the moment the doors of Shepard’s cabin close behind them, and Kaidan’s barely touched the mattress before Shepard traps him in his arms. He breathes in the scent of soap and clean skin while Shepard plants kisses against his neck. A soft, contented rumble echoes in Kaidan’s throat.

“Good sounds,” Shepard mumbles between kisses. “Favorite sounds. I’m very into you. Did you know that?”

“First I’ve heard of it.”

Shepard chuckles as his hands start to rove.

“Still a little handsy, are we?” Kaidan asks, melting into the touch.

“You _did_ get two rounds out of that,” Shepard points out.

Kaidan raises an eyebrow, preening a little as Shepard traces circles along his stomach.

“Sam, it’s not even one yet. If you decide you’re not fully satisfied, I’ll give you a blowjob that’ll change your life.”

“You already have.” Shepard’s expression starts tender, then crinkles with consternation. “No. Wait. Dammit. I was aiming for something more, uh. Eloquent than that. More eloquent than implying you sucking my dick is what changed my life, I mean. Don’t get me wrong, that part is _great,_ but it’s not… fuck.”

Kaidan kisses his cheek. “You’re adorable.”

“Dammit, that isn’t what I was going for.” The consternation turns to real frustration. “I don’t know how to explain how you make me feel. It’s _maddening_.”

“Hey.” Kaidan catches Shepard’s chin in his fingers. Under Kaidan’s gaze, Shepard’s expression smooths out and he exhales. “You don’t need to, Sam. I already know.”

Shepard traces Kaidan’s jaw with a finger. “Every day of my life is better with you in it. I don’t…want to know what I would be like without you.”

Kaidan kisses him. Soft, deep, until their bodies blend together and chase away the empty space. When they part they stay nose to nose and listen to each other breathe until Kaidan rolls him the other way. Kaidan slips an arm beneath him, wraps the other around him, and pulls Shepard close to his chest.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers.

Shepard sighs deeply. “I like that about you.”

Kaidan nuzzles him with his nose. It’s too early to be thinking about the clock, counting how many minutes they have left until 04:45. But it’s hard not to. Let the galaxy save itself for a day or two. All he wants is _this._

“I don’t want to slow things down,” Shepard says after a moment.

“I know,” Kaidan murmurs, feeling the pain and frustration deep in his bones. “Maybe…we could take some shore leave. Real shore leave. Without an inquest or my parents. Dock somewhere, who cares where, and spend a few days just…you and me.”

“Mmmm,” Shepard agrees, wriggling a little to adjust himself in Kaidan’s arms. “Find a hotel somewhere. Never leave the room. Because it’ll have a private shower.”

Kaidan chuckles. “Yeah.”

“I like that. A lot.”

“Me too.”

“You and me,” Shepard whispers.

Kaidan draws Shepard tighter against his chest, reveling in the weight and warmth of him, how _real_ he feels. “Always.”


	3. Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liara ponders the future. Alchera destroys it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a scene depicting a graphic injury.

_No matter how many breaths that you took_   
_You still couldn't breathe_

[x](https://open.spotify.com/track/7FLVnDMOZXKRFgRM3C4aUG?si=VzW7F5GNQL2Hh8PyrgowkA)

**Burn**

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System (-1h:52m)_

_Monsters are coming_.

Liara’s eyes open wide. It is far too early to be awake, but she makes no attempt to reclaim her lost sleep.

The echoes of the prothean beacon are much softer than they had been since her meld with Shepard after Virmire, but even the static they left behind still drowns out all other sound.

She blinks at the ceiling, gripping the blanket in her fist.

The afterimages of the protheans’ warnings may belong to Shepard, but the fear is hers. How long will it take them, this ancient machine intelligence with knowledge spanning eons, to overcome the blow Shepard has dealt them?

If they believe the reapers were stopped by denying them access to the Citadel, they are all fools.

There will be no more sleep this morning. This morning there will be coffee.

She rises from the cot in Dr. Chakwas’ office. Since the inquest on Earth she has chosen to sleep here instead of a sleeper pod, and so far the human doctor has not complained. She cannot rest surrounded by humans who believe they have won, who walk about the ship as though a weight has been removed from their shoulders. For Liara, the weight has only grown heavier since they left Sol and headed to the Terminus Systems.

It is not just the crew, either. Even Shepard seems content to rest, revel in their victory at the Citadel. Shepard, who still bears the full burden of the beacon, and not just an echo.

Liara tugs on a fresh uniform and leaves the doctor’s office. The medbay is still dark and quiet.

Shepard should know better than any of them what lies ahead if they do not act. And they _must_ act. They must prepare. They need _answers_.

Answers that Shepard may already have. But he has made it clear he has no wish to revisit the prothean cache in his head.

She freezes when she enters the mess, well before the regular Alliance watch change, and finds him already at a table, lounging in a chair. He holds a datapad in one hand, cup of coffee in the other, steam still curling from the rim. He raises an eyebrow when she approaches, tone friendly but cautious.

“You look tired, T’Soni.”

She eyes the cup of coffee in his hand, glances at the pot and decides on tea. Shepard’s reputation for brewing coffee is not nearly as impressive as his reputation for saving the galaxy.

“I have been thinking,” she replies, searching for the tin that Dr. Chakwas keeps well stocked.

Shepard grunts. “That doesn’t bode well for me, I’m guessing.”

She winces. She had overstepped – gravely – by pushing for another meld so soon after their stand on the Citadel. When he objected she had argued instead of listened, allowed her fear of the future to overlook their friendship.

But her fear is so _real_. Everyone around her believes the race against time ended with Saren’s death and Sovereign’s destruction, when truly it is just beginning.

Is it because human lives are so short that he does not realize how little time they have to prepare for the reapers? Perhaps they will not return within Shepard’s lifespan. But it is likely, if not certain, that they will return within Liara’s.

It is not fear she feels. It is _terror._ Shepard may be the _only_ thing standing between this cycle and extinction. She is certain the Virmire beacon imprinted him with more than a simple warning. There is _data_ there, and with the cipher they can uncover it. They cannot afford to wait.

Shepard’s lifespan is so short.

But that makes her guilty of everything the Council and the Alliance have done to him since Eden Prime – viewing him as nothing more than a tool.

He deserves better than that.

“Commander,” she says, then hesitates, training her focus on the teak kettle’s temperature gauge.

He folds his arms across his chest and leans back in his chair. “Uh oh. Now you’re using titles. Definitely doesn’t bode well.”

“No, I do not mean to…” She sighs. “I wish to apologize.”

The kettle dings, and she begins steeping the tea. Dr. Chakwas really does have excellent taste.

“Apology accepted,” he replies.

“It is that simple?” she asks in surprise.

He nods. “It’s that simple.”

She takes her cup of tea in both hands and sits down across from him, placing herself in the crosshairs of that perceptive gaze. The same one that a few weeks ago had wilted seasoned Alliance admirals. It is far too wise for someone so young.

“I understand why it’s important,” he tells her, drumming his fingers on the table. “I just need…time. Can you give me that?”

She nods. The choice is not hers to begin with, and therefore she has no choice to make. She merely accepts.

He takes a sip of his coffee, expression softening to something more thoughtful. “I was actually thinking of putting in for some shore leave. Maybe find somewhere reputable and just dock the ship for a few days. Not like we got much chance to unwind in Vancouver.”

“I see,” she says, a hint of a smile forming at her lips. “Would the outcome of the inquest have anything to do with your sudden desire for relaxation?”

He raises an enigmatic eyebrow. “Maybe.”

The gravity well ripples as Alenko chooses that moment to enter the mess. Shepard’s attention automatically drifts in the lieutenant’s direction.

Liara tilts her head. “What was that phrase you used? The one suggesting I was right and you should have listened?”

“I told you so?”

“Yes, that is it.” She smiles. “I do like that one.”

Shepard chuckles. In the galley, Alenko’s eyes shift to Shepard as he approaches the coffee pot, a poorly hidden smile on his face.

“I was too slow this morning, wasn’t I?” he asks. “You definitely brewed this.”

“What incriminated me?” Shepard says.

“The fact I can stand a fork up in it,” Alenko replies. He dumps the contents of the pot in the sink and starts a fresh one.

“I could have you court martialed for fucking with my coffee,” Shepard informs him.

“If the Alliance couldn’t make mutiny stick, I’m betting you can’t bench me for having better taste in coffee,” Kaidan says good-naturedly, “but if you want to give it a go, I’ll fill out the paperwork.”

There is a reason Liara chose tea instead of coffee.

“It is good to see you this happy,” she says softly.

Shepard tears his gaze away from Kaidan and gives her a lopsided smile. “I’ll be even happier when I get back in my tank. ETA to Alchera is about two hours and I cannot wait to drop that thing down in the snow.”

“Fuck your tank,” Alenko calls from the galley.

“Just for that, we’re gonna make eezo snow angels,” Shepard informs him. Kaidan chuckles.

When the coffee finishes brewing he joins them at the table, deftly maneuvering his chair closer to the commander’s side. Liara smiles at them both and gets to her feet.

“Going so soon?” Shepard asks.

She doesn’t need to leave. Not yet. But Shepard and Alenko have so few moments to be alone, and it won’t be long until first watch comes looking for breakfast. If she can grant them even a few private minutes, she will do so.

“My gift to you,” she says.

Kaidan flushes a little and looks down at his hands where they rest on the table. Shepard’s lips curl in a smile as he reaches for his coffee cup, knuckles brushing Kaidan’s arm in a carefully planned accident.

“I have a few things to take care of and then I am going to the cargo bay,” she tells them. “I still have not adjusted to the new scram rail on my pistol. I would rather not be caught unprepared should we actually find anything out here.”

“If you need any help I’ll be down after breakfast to run the checklist on the Mako,” Kaidan says.

“Thank you,” she replies. “I may take you up on that.”

Shepard nods. “See you later, Liara.”

She does not see him again for two years.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System - Approaching Alchera (-0h:14m)_

“Hex this pistol,” Liara mutters as the overheated klaxon wails once again. Her ability to use it at all is hard fought to begin with, and the new scram rail has ruined what little rhythm she has. She makes a noise of disgust and nearly throws it against the Mako, but marshals her temper enough to holster it instead. The seals of her helmet release with a soft snick. She pulls it off and discards it on the weapons bench, thankful to be free of her HUD’s constant scroll for a few minutes.

“You’re doing fine,” Kaidan assures her, adjusting the plating of his combat armor over the undersuit, clicking the final connections into place. Liara can’t shake a sense of unease that comes with seeing the hardsuits again. She had gotten used to fatigues. Complacent, even. Just as she had accused Shepard of being.

“Remember what I said,” he adds.

“Act fast, think slow,” she repeats.

“Exactly.”

On the other side of the cargo bay Tali climbs down from the Mako’s roof and wipes her hands on her thighs before making her way over to them. “She looks good, Kaidan. Sorry.”

“Too much to hope that power fluctuation wasn’t a fluke.”

Tali hands him the datapad containing the completed checklist. “Admit it. You’re looking forward to it.”

“Now you’re just spreading rumors,” Kaidan says, but he can’t hide a smile. He waves the datapad. “I’ll go deliver the bad news. Pressly found us a landing zone that’s bigger than twenty meters this time, so I think I’m out of excuses.” He scoops his helmet up off the bench and heads to the elevator. Tali leans back against the row of lockers and watches him go, shaking her head.

“I am dying to know what happened after the gala, and he will _not_ tell me.”

“Why are the details important?” Liara asks with amusement.

“That’s the most important _part_. Joker and I have so many theories. He thinks it was the dance that got them to confess how they felt to each other. I think it was the rain. They were _out_ in that rain, Liara, I _saw_ Kaidan’s hair, it was _just_ like _Forbidden Ops._ How are we to know which one of us is right if he won’t _tell_ me?”

“Is it not enough they are happy?”

Tali plants a hand on her hip. “Liara. Do you know how much time I spent setting up those countermeasures to make sure they didn’t get _caught_ if they danced together? I have invested a great deal in their relationship. Of course it’s not enough.”

Liara laughs. “Then perhaps you should go down to Alchera with them. Perfect opportunity to pursue your... _academic_ inquiries.”

“No way. Shepard in a good mood behind the wheel of the Mako? Joker and I have a bet going on how long it takes him to plow it into a snow drift and require extraction.” She tilts her head. “Besides. My odds of getting intel are better spying on them than riding in the backseat.”

Liara would like to think Tali is joking about spying. But she is not…certain that is the correct conclusion.

Tali sighs. “I have to get back to engineering. Negulesco and Tanaka have been at each other’s throats and I promised Caroline I wouldn’t leave her alone with them for too long.”

“Isn’t Adams on duty?” Liara asks.

“He is, but he tries not to get involved unless he has to. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Liara says, picking up the blasted pistol once more as Tali heads for the engine room. The gravity well cants as the drive core oscillates. A brief but familiar sense of vertigo rocks her as the inertial dampeners kick in to compensate for the drop in velocity. They must be close to Alchera.

She has the cargo bay to herself until the elevator returns. She expects Alenko, but it is actually Sergeant Barrett, the requisitions officer, returning to inventory a couple of crates of weapon and armor mods they’d picked up in Vancouver. Kaidan had been muttering last night about the fact it had not been completed.

“Doctor,” the sergeant says with a polite nod, which she returns. She does not know Barrett well, though they have exchanged pleasantries a few times. She rolls her shoulders, takes a deep breath and resets the target.

_Act fast, think slow_.

Maybe Kaidan’s advice applies to more than just her pistol. When it comes to the reapers she needs to think slower. Develop a _plan_. Something beyond this panicked, mad scramble she has mired herself in since the inquest.

Not _all_ the answers lie in Shepard’s head. He may be the primary source, but there are other avenues she can pursue in the meantime. Such as a return to Ilos.

It had been a _research_ facility, left largely untouched. Even if Vigil is offline, there will be data there. The prototype relay is still there. Imagine what they could do with the blueprint to build a relay! Or how they might use the information on reaper communications with the keepers! The cipher had made it possible for Shepard to communicate with the VI systems outside of Vigil. He could use it again to parse the data they did not recover in their haste to stop Saren.

Hope flares to life in her chest.

_Act fast, think slow._

The ship heaves.

Screeching, twisting metal shatters the quiet of the cargo bay. The deckplates roll under her feet, slamming her chest-first into the weapon’s bench and driving the air from her lungs. She gasps. The inertial dampeners whine, Mako shifting dangerously in its restraints as the ship rights itself only to lurch a second time.

The crates Barrett had been inventorying overturn, pistols, shotguns and modification apparatus clattering to the ground like hailstones. Barrett smashes against one of the support columns with a cry of surprise. A beam from the cavernous roof shakes loose of its moorings, striking the ground with an eruption of orange sparks.

Liara groans, still scrambling for breath. “What…”

Barrett reclaims his feet and springs across the cargo bay towards the row of lockers, yanking a door open. “Dr. T’Soni! Get your helmet!”

Alarm panels embedded in the walls of the cargo bay flash to accompany a screeching klaxon, the ship’s VI dutifully informing them of a hull breach.

The ship bucks a third time. An overhead light pops, showering them with sparks.

“We’re losing the ship,” Barrett shouts. “We have to get to the crew deck. Now!”

Liara hits her knees and stretches under the weapons bench for her helmet, corona flaring bright to snag it in a biotic field and pull it towards her. With shaking hands she jams the helmet back in place until the seals click and register green.

Information scrolls past her HUD about the hull breach. _Goddess_. _It’s the CIC._

By the time she gets to her feet Barrett is halfway across the cargo bay, headed for the engine room.

_Tali._

The ship veers violently to starboard. A ceiling tile swings loose over the left ramp to engineering, yanking a thick knot of smoldering cable down with it. It strikes the ground like a clap of thunder. Barrett swerves back in front of the elevator to take the right path, and Liara nearly collides with him. The door slides open to reveal Tali, Adams and Caroline Grenado.

“Tali!” Liara exclaims. “We have to—”

Rushing heat wrenches her off her feet. Liara flicks her fingers but can’t summon a protective barrier before her head strikes a bulkhead. Stars explode in front of her eyes.

She groans. The sharp tang of ozone floods her nostrils through the suit filters. More klaxons wail as a starburst of pain erupts from her leg. This time the klaxon isn’t for the ship. _Suit breach._ Dimly she wraps her fingers around a large piece of shrapnel protruding from the armored plating of her thigh, wet with blood and the greasy slick of medigel. Fire roars in the remains of the engine room, throwing off a thick blanket of heat and ash. The fire suppression system hasn’t kicked in.

_Tali_.

Dazed, she searches her HUD for Tali’s transponder tag while scanning the rapidly spreading sea of murk for her purple hood. Adams shifts under a pile of rubble.

A high keen punctures the dull roar in her ears. Liara whips her head around to find Tali, her suit blackened with soot and scorch marks, kneeling in front of a mangled form.

Grenado.

A metal spar gores through her chest, pinning her to the bulkhead. Chunks of flesh, blood and slivers of bone cling to the jagged point. The engineer stirs, lifts her hand to paw weakly at the metal, hands smearing through her own blood. Tali screams, the sound so sharp and _real_ it snaps Liara out of her haze. She staggers to her feet.

“Adams!” Barrett bellows, coughing from the dust and debris hanging in the air. He’d managed to get his hardsuit on but not a helmet. “Help me!” He reaches Tali and seizes her by the arm, but she plants her feet.

“No!” the quarian screeches, kicking as Adams wraps his arms around her and lifts her forcibly off the ground. “We have to _help her!”_

“There’s nothing we can _do_ ,” Barrett argues, deliberately avoiding the gruesome sight. “The engine room’s on fire, this whole place is gonna flood with CO2!”

“I am _not_ leaving her,” Tali hisses.

“Caroline,” Adams murmurs, looking the mortally wounded engineer in the eye. “I’m so sorry.”

Adams, dazed and bleeding but fully mobile, pushes Tali towards the elevator. “The elevator’s our only way up to the crew deck. Everyone out, that’s an order!”

Grenado tries to speak. Instead of sound, blood bubbles from her mouth in bright red streams, the shock in her friendly brown eyes melting into terror. One trembling arm extends feebly towards Liara.

Liara falters, clutching at the spar in her thigh. Tali is right. Grenado is _alive_. Even if they could free her and get her to a medbay it would not matter, but she isn’t _dead,_ not yet, _goddess_ there is so much blood…

_Act fast. Think slow._

Her hand strays to her pistol, still secure in its holster. Her aim is not reliable and this is not target practice.

Tears pinch her eyes as she limps to Grenado’s side. Caroline has always been so cheerful. So enthusiastic. A friend Tali could depend on, someone Adams always raved about, a face Liara saw every day.

Liara has been here before. _You had mercy on Benezia. You can have mercy on her._

She embraces the engineer as best she can around the spar, shutting her eyes against the blood and viscera. “I will not leave you here alone,” she whispers.

Grenado chokes with relief as Liara draws the pistol, placing it against the engineer’s head. This close, there is no way she can miss.

She tucks the pistol in her holster as she hobbles to the elevator. Even if the shot had been quiet, there is no mistaking the human blood now smeared across the front of Liara’s hardsuit. Adams and Barrett avoid her gaze. Tali weeps.

Barrett slams the button to take them to the crew deck just as the ship lurches again. The restraints holding the Mako snap, sending it skidding across the cargo bay before it catches on the center supports and cants towards the elevator. Liara gasps as the doors slide shut, bracing for the impact, but the elevator shudders to life and ascends with a jerk. The boom of the tank’s collision reverberates up the cable and into the deckplates. Liara swallows a shriek.

The _Normandy_ veers – hard – metal creaking and groaning in protest. Adams swears as the elevator jolts to a stop. Liara sucks air through her teeth as the throb in her thigh radiates all the way up through her ribcage.

Adams guides Tali towards Liara and reaches upwards. A metal shard juts from Tali’s right shoulder. Liara’s gut clenches. _No time for that._ No time for anything but getting to the crew deck and hoping there’s still an escape pod.

Even in the elevator’s small space Adams’ voice gets lost among the ringing klaxons and grind of metal on metal. “We have to get this panel off. Only way out is up.”

Barrett, face ashen, stretches up to help. He’s shorter than the chief engineer, but manages to grasp the handle in the ceiling panel that gives them access to the roof of the car.

“Fuck, it won’t move!”

Adams pounds on the panel, but nothing happens.

Liara’s corona blooms to life. She directs a wash of dark energy at the wedged panel, but it doesn’t budge. Something has lodged it in place. If debris has fallen on it from the other side she could dislodge it – if she could _see_ it. If it is the latch, her motor control may not be fine enough.

Liara clutches Tali, the pain in her thigh ramping up from a dull thud to a sharp lance. _We are going to die in here_.

The gravity well churns as another biotic field hums, lighting up her nerves. The panel moves. On the other side of it, someone yanks, jerking it aside and flinging it away.

_Kaidan_.

“Come on!” the lieutenant shouts, offering an armored hand, body limned in blue.

Barrett gestures to Liara and forms a brace with his hands. With the help of Adams and biotics they get Tali up high enough for Alenko to grab her good arm and haul her out of the elevator car. Liara follows. The elevator car sways, strains, but holds. Kaidan reaches back down for Adams.

“Where’s Shepard?” Liara demands.

“He went after Joker.”

The ship rolls to the right, flinging Liara against the wall of the shaft. The _Normandy_ groans as the thrusters gasp one last, futile effort to escape the inevitable. But that means Joker is still at the helm. He’s still on the ship. Shepard is still on the ship. She crawls to her feet, crying out as the shrapnel digs even deeper.

“Barrett, come on!” Alenko grips his hand, corona flaring brighter to lift him out. The _Normandy_ shudders with a series of quick pops – the steady, one by one ejection of the escape pods.

Thick, black smoke smothers the shaft, but it’s still pressurized. Thank the goddess. Adams isn’t in a suit, and Barrett is missing his helmet.

Alenko shoves her to the access ladder. Rung by rung, in the longest climb of Liara’s life, with errant wires sending sparks tumbling past like fireworks, they make their way to the open panel where Alenko had descended into the shaft.

They sprawl onto the crew deck floor with short-lived gasps of relief. Fire rages from the ceiling, raining twisted chunks of metal and debris, like being on the Citadel all over again. The blue shimmer of a kinetic barrier forms a line of demarcation at the far edge of the galley. Beyond it, pieces of hull peel away to expose the stars. Several unmoored sleeper pods float gracefully in the absence of gravity, tumbling into space. One is still occupied.

A lancing beam of energy slices through the aft hull. The ship shimmies, bucks, then splinters. More kinetic barriers snap into place to keep out the vacuum.

“Go!” Kaidan yells. Through the black smoke Elaina Zambrano ducks inside an open hatch, clutching an arm bent in the wrong direction. Cold, white bone glares through broken skin.

“Elaina! Hold the door!”

The technician’s pain-filled eyes widen at the sight of the five of them barreling across the fractured deckplates. Fire suppression still works on the crew deck, spraying water and foam in a laughable effort to put out the flames. Heated droplets spatter Liara’s faceplate. Tali trips over a pile of mangled metal. Kaidan swoops down, gets her back on her feet, and keeps running.

Liara’s feet lose contact with the deckplates as the artificial gravity fails. With a desperate lunge Kaidan thrusts Tali forward, letting the sudden decrease in gravity serve as momentum to get her the rest of the way. Liara flails, trying to propel herself towards the tiny hatch of the escape pod, wondering with vague dismay if she will miss the door, miss her chance, miss _everything_. But Tali, now inside the pod, grabs her by the arm and pulls her in, sealing the door with a smack of her hand once they’re all inside.

“Airlock sealed,” Adams says breathlessly. “Bringing thrusters online!”

“Get us out of here!” Alenko orders.

A grinding, wrenching sound shakes the entire pod as the ship torques at the precise moment Adams disengages the clamps. They hold their breath, waiting for the opposing forces to rip them apart. The pod groans, strains, then breaks free, thrusters firing, whipping them away from their moorings like a spinning top. Without gravity Liara quickly loses all sense of orientation, unable to tell if they are headed away from the crippled _Normandy_ or right back to it.

Zambrano hadn’t been able to lock down her restraints. With a scream she careens about the cramped space, a loose projectile helpless to stop herself. One of her boots catches Barrett in the nose. Droplets of blood float past Liara’s face. She inhales sharply as the pod lurches and her head cracks against the seat restraint. Zambrano collides with Alenko, who tries and fails to snag her.

The small pod finally rights itself enough for Alenko to loosen his restraints, grab hold of Zambrano and jam her into a chair. Her arm swings nauseatingly in the lack of gravity, eyes glassy and distant. Alenko shoves the harness down over her head and locks it in place, then kicks off the wall back to his seat.

Adams, struggling to focus on the haptic controls at his seat, sucks in a breath. “Oh, God—”

The _Normandy_ goes up. Liara gasps as a wave of pressure slams through her nerves, dark energy from the massive Tantalus drive core sweeping past in a violent flood. Across from her, Alenko groans in pain at the sensation.

The pod pitches, but Adams is ready and holds their course. Out the small shutter superheated streaks of metal and hull streak past them, shrouded in a silvery cloud of exudate and vented oxygen. A wave of debris strikes the hull in a chatter of clanks and rattles. In front of them yawns the blue and white marble of Alchera.

The pod’s thrusters fire again, slamming Liara hard against the seat restraint. “Trying to establish a geosynchronous orbit,” Adams says through gritted teeth. “We’re over the horizon.”

“Can we set down on Alchera?” Kaidan asks.

“Sensors are offline. There’s no way to know if we still have enough hull plating to test re-entry.”

Liara sucks in a breath. After everything, the death knell of the _Normandy_ may have condemned them all.

“Do we have comms?” Alenko asks.

“Negative.” Adams hesitates. The pod swerves as another wave of debris strikes. “Trying to establish a high orbit. Breaking thrusters are offline. Shit, shit, _shit_.”

The view out the shutters slants dangerously, and for a moment Liara is certain they will test re-entry despite the engineer’s efforts. But Tali reaches a weary hand up to a haptic interface that springs to life before her. Fractures spider through her faceplate.

Somehow, miraculously, the breaking thrusters engage. Adams emits a ragged cheer, and slowly, painfully, the pod slips into orbit. “We’re stable,” the engineer says finally. “Limited sensor function coming online. Still no comms.”

Silence falls. Kaidan pulls his helmet off. Smears of soot across his cheek stand out in sharp contrast to his ashen skin.

Outside the narrow shutter the remains of what until moments ago had been home drift sagely past. A large piece of plated hull with the silhouette of a painted _N_ tumbles into view until Adams thumbs the gimble and rotates them away.

“Can you detect other pods?” Kaidan asks. Adams, hand shaking, works the controls. “I’m reading eight,” he says. “Eight pods out of ten.”

“Did the bridge pod eject?”

_Shepard_. _Joker._ Liara’s heart beats harder.

“I…I can’t tell you that, sir.”

Kaidan runs trembling fingers through his hair. “Do whatever it takes to find out. We have to re-establish chain of command. Account for every member of the crew. Any way to know if a distress signal got out?”

Zambrano speaks up, her voice thick and slurring. “Felawa…gotta ping fr’ comm buoy b’fore…” She starts weeping.

Alenko swallows, then points to the requisition officer’s feet. The panel behind his legs bears a red cross. “Barrett. See what we have in the way of medigel. Liara, I might need help patching everyone up.”

Liara nods as Barrett releases his safety harness and braces against it with one hand to keep from floating to the ceiling, popping the panel open with the other.

“My suit’s already dispensed antibiotics,” Tali says distantly, sounding about how Zambrano looks.

_Not enough, I imagine,_ Liara thinks. Tali needs a doctor and a sterilized medical bay – soon. She glances at Adams. “How long before the Alliance sends aid?”

Adams rubs some of the sweat off his face. “We’re two jumps from the closest relay in Council space. If Zambrano’s right and they got a response from the comm buoy that’s at least a day, maybe two, if they come at all.”

A day or two. Liara’s gaze settles on Tali. The difference between one day and two may be insurmountable for her. Perhaps for all of them.

“Sir.”

Kaidan turns his head towards Adams.

“Audio comms are still down but I’m getting a tightbeam from pod four.” His voice wavers a little. “It’s Dr. Chakwas. She’s…updating the crew manifest. A few fatalities have been confirmed, all others listed as missing until proven otherwise. She’s asking for orders.”

_Alenko is third in command,_ Liara thinks. _Why is she asking Alenko for orders?_

“Who’s confirmed?” Kaidan asks, voice hoarse.

Adams licks his lips, face like a sheet of broken glass that has been glued back together. “Chase… Felawa…”

Zambrano moans.

“…Greico…” He stutters, stops, puts a hand to his forehead. “Pressly.”

Barrett and Tali both gasp.

Kaidan clenches the medkit tight in his hands. “Report who we have on board, and ask for a status on all survivors.”

“Grenado,” Tali murmurs. Heavy silence falls in the pod. Liara wipes at Grenado’s blood now drying on her chestplate, which only serves to smear it further. _I will not leave you here alone,_ she’d told her. Not a lie. Not really. Had it given her any comfort, even for a moment?

Adams nods, expression vacant. “Negulesco and Tanaka didn’t make it out of the engine room.”

“What happened?” Barrett asks, a note of hysteria creeping into his voice. “What _hit_ us?”

“Don’t know,” Adams says with a shake of his head. “Joker called for evasive maneuvers and all hell broke loose.”

“Not the time to speculate,” Kaidan interrupts, voice like the sharp edge of a knife. “Liara, I need your help with triage. Adams, we need to re-establish communication. Do _everything_ you can to get me in touch with the other pods. Barrett, get some omnigel and patch that crack on Tali’s faceplate.”

“But sir, I don’t—”

“It doesn’t have to be a _good_ patch, Sergeant, just seal those cracks and _protect her_.”

Barrett activates his omnitool with a shaking hand, offering no further protests. Liara unhooks her seat restraints, grimacing as a new wave of throbbing pain radiates from her thigh. Kaidan makes a quick check of the injury and puts a hand on her shoulder, putting himself directly in her eye line. “Can you manage until we see to Tali and Zambrano?”

She swallows and nods. Kaidan’s voice is crisp, controlled, even comforting in its authority. _Act fast, think slow_. “I’ll be ok,” she says. “What do you need me to do?”

“Image Tali’s arm while I look at Zambrano. Adams, I need you to send Liara’s scans to Dr. Chakwas along with a message. Tell her Tali took shrapnel. I need her recommendation on how to proceed without sterile conditions.” He maneuvers over to Tali and takes her hand. “Hang in there, okay? I’m going to do everything I can.”

She nods. “I know.”

He moves out of Barrett’s way and pushes over to Zambrano. Liara wedges herself between Adams and Barrett to get access to the shrapnel lodged in Tali’s shoulder. Now that she can stop to look at it, her stomach churns. The shrapnel is thin, but large. The servos of Tali’s suit click and strain to manufacture an automatic patch, but keep getting stymied by the still-present obstruction.

“Better the arm than my chest,” Tali says, voice tight. “Easier to isolate.”

“You already survived a gunshot to the stomach,” Liara points out. “This should be child’s play.” She does not say what they are both thinking. Wrex had gotten Tali to the _Normandy’s_ medbay within minutes after she took the hit on Virmire. Here, there is no krogan charging to their rescue.

Liara exhales as she runs the scan. Barrett gingerly applies a dose of omnigel to Tali’s faceplate.

“Sorry,” he apologizes as the gel bonds to the cracks. “I bet that makes it even harder to see.”

“My HUD still works,” she assures him. “Not much to see in here, anyway.”

Barrett pushes away and drifts back to his seat. Liara completes the scan and sends it to Adams, who remains focused on the haptic controls.

“Liara,” Kaidan says, nodding towards Zambrano. “I need you to help me splint the bone.”

The sharp, antiseptic smell of medigel fills the pod. Liara squeezes Tali’s hand and floats to Kaidan. Zambrano groans as he shifts her arm. A hardsuit would have stabilized the fracture with a power assist lock instantly, probably prevented it from becoming compound in the first place, but she hadn’t been able to get into one before getting to the escape pod.

“I’m giving you morphine,” Kaidan tells the young woman, applying a dermal injector to the inside of her elbow on her good arm. “Then I’m going to splint it. Try not to move.” He nods at Liara, who keeps the limb as stable as she can while he works. Zambrano cries softly.

“Stay with me, Zambrano. You’re still on duty.”

“Sir,” she mumbles.

Kaidan glances at Liara. “She has a concussion. We need to keep her awake.”

“Barrett,” Liara says, keeping her voice low. “It would help occupy him.”

“Good idea,” Kaidan says with a nod.

“Sir,” Adams says, voice rising sharply. “I’ve got something back from Chakwas. She’s been able to contact a few of the other pods. There’s…a message coded for your omnitool.”

Kaidan stiffens, the pause before his reply lengthening into seconds. “Route it to me.”

Adams obliges.

Kaidan reads the message and sucks in a breath, face pale. “Can you confirm the location of pod one?”

“I’ll try.”

_Shepard_. Whatever the message contained, he’s looking for Shepard.

Painful seconds pass. Liara clutches her thigh with a hand, unable to think about anything but the sharp dig of the shrapnel and the ongoing silence that holds Shepard’s life in its invisible fingers.

“I see them,” Adams says finally.

Relief etches Kaidan’s features. “Can you get us in position to tightbeam?”

“Sir, I don’t—”

“I have to know who’s in that pod.”

Wordless, the engineer nods and works to reposition them once more. “Give me a few minutes.”

Kaidan swallows. “If you get a reply, route it to my omnitool.”

More silence. Kaidan drifts until he bumps the roof of the pod with his head. He throws a hand up to brace himself, gaze trained on the engineer. Liara’s heart starts to pound. Something is wrong. Something is _very_ wrong. Even if communications are compromised, Shepard should be doing everything to re-establish them, just like Kaidan is now.

But they have not heard from him yet.

Could he be wounded? _Dying?_ Pod one is from the bridge. _Someone_ is on it. If Joker had made it out, Shepard _must_ be with him.

“The VI said there was a hull breach in the CIC,” Liara murmurs. “Perhaps he did not reach Joker.”

Kaidan shakes his head. “He did six weeks intensive zero G in combat conditions for the N program. He trained for _exactly_ this. He made it to Joker.”

“Sir,” Adams says quietly. “I’ve got something.”

Kaidan’s omnitool lights up with an incoming message. Liara holds her breath. A dreadful quiet fills the pod as he watches it blink before opening the message with a trembling hand. His eyes dart across it quickly, then still. For half a second, his ever-present composure falters. When he closes his tool he gazes out the small shutter, expression numb.

Fear clutches Liara’s chest.

“Get a message out to all pods,” Kaidan says, voice gruff. “Until further notice, I’m assuming command of the _Normandy’s_ crew.”

Stricken silence follows. _Shepard cannot be dead. He cannot be. I just had coffee with him._

Kaidan rakes fingers through his hair. He swallows, takes a deep breath, and refocuses on Adams.

“I need a sitrep from every pod. We…need to start running systems checks. Life support. Sensors. Comms. Power cells. I want to know what we have and how long we’ll have it. Anyone with sensor capabilities should point them at the debris field.” His voice catches. “Look for hardsuit transponders.”

“Sir,” Adams murmurs. “Dr. Chakwas sent instructions for Tali. Remove the shrapnel, patch as best you can and monitor for blood infection. Sterilize anything you can.”

Kaidan nods, gazing once more out the shutter before pushing towards Tali. His hands shake as he opens the medkit. He stops, clenching it tight between his fingers, then ducks his head and exhales.

“Kaidan,” Tali murmurs. “Maybe the message is wrong. Maybe he’s—”

“You’re my priority right now,” he interrupts. “We have to get the shrapnel out. Will your suit manufacture a patch?”

She nods. “It’s already isolated the area from the rest of my biofilters. Antibiotics are doing their job. It’ll be okay, Kaidan.”

He nods curtly and gestures for Liara, handing her a medigel dispenser. “Once I’ve got the bleeding under control, be ready to seal it off. Tali, focus on Liara. It’s in deep. This is going to hurt.”

“Already anesthetized the area,” she mumbles. But she grabs Liara’s hand.

Kaidan removes a sterile hemostat from the medkit and uses it to latch onto the shrapnel. He hooks his boot under the seat to give him some leverage in the zero G and pulls, slow but steady. Tali moans and grips Liara’s hand tighter. Kaidan grits his teeth and continues to ease it out, millimeter by millimeter. Blood begins oozing freely around the wound, a pucker of grey skin visible through the suit breach.

“Almost there,” Kaidan mutters. A few more seconds and it finally comes free, accompanied by a gush of blood that beads and floats. A few droplets splash against Liara’s chestplate, mingling with Grenado’s. Kaidan applies a sterile compression pad and holds it firm. “You’re doing great,” he assures Tali. After a minute he nods at Liara. When he removes the pad she dispenses the medigel.

“Still with us?” he asks when he’s done sterilizing the site. Without the shrapnel in the way, her suit is already manufacturing the patch.

She nods. “Mostly.”

He puts a hand on her good shoulder. “Have your suit VI run a diagnostic check every hour and keep me informed. Nothing’s going to drain in zero G. If there’s fluid buildup we might need to siphon it off. I’m keeping you alive until someone comes for us. Got that?”

“Thank you,” she whispers. Her hold on Liara’s hand loosens, but until she lets it go of her own accord, Liara has no plans to release it.

Kaidan pinches the bridge of his nose between armored fingers and exhales.

“We do not know what happened yet,” Liara says, voice low. “Maybe he did not get to Joker and got in a different pod—”

“He got to Joker,” Kaidan replies, avoiding eye contact. “He put Joker in the pod.”

She frowns, confused. “Then what—”

“Joker is alone in the pod,” Kaidan says, teeth clenching. “I don’t know the rest.”

Liara puts a hand on his arm. “Kaidan.”

He shrugs her off and activates his omnitool, running another scan of Tali’s injury. “It doesn’t mean he’s dead. He was wearing his suit. He could be… _out_ there.”

“Even if he is, even if we _find_ him, we don’t have a way to get him without depressurizing the pod,” Adams interjects.

“One problem at a time,” Kaidan snaps. “Just keep looking for a transponder.”

Adams swallows. “Yes, sir.”

Liara hisses through her teeth as Kaidan bumps against her thigh when he closes the medkit.

“Liara,” he says, eyes widening. “Shit. I’m sorry. Let me take a look.”

“It’s fi—”

“Let me see it.”

Tali lets go of her hand so she can float closer to the ceiling while Kaidan aims for the floor to examine the gleam of metal protruding from the plating on her thigh. He images it, frowning at the results.

“It’s not too deep. Your medical exoskeleton can control the bleeding and protect it from infection. Looks like you still have enough narcotic packs loaded to manage pain while we wait.”

“Okay,” she says with a nod.

He helps her back into her seat, fastening the restraints to keep her from floating. His brow furrows, corners of his eyes pinched tight as he looks for another hemostat. When he can’t find one he balls a fist and sucks in a breath.

“Kaidan—” Liara begins.

“It’s all right. I can fabricate one.” He programs the omnitool and chews his lip, the few seconds it takes to build too long for his composure to fully hold. He swears under his breath. “I shouldn’t have let him go alone.”

She touches his arm, hesitantly this time, but he does not push her away. “Had you not come for us, everyone in this pod would have gone down with the ship.”

He nods almost imperceptibly. Deep down, she wonders if that would have affected his choice had he known the consequences.

It would have affected Liara’s.

Shepard is more valuable than everyone on the ship, herself included. Without him…

She cannot think about that. Not yet.

_We just had coffee this morning. He was smiling. He was happy. We had hope._

“He’s survived worse,” Kaidan says. “He could still be out there. We just have to look.”

She nods. They have limited sensor capability. No idea when rescue will come. And even if they could locate him before he runs out of oxygen, Adams is right. There is no way to bring him aboard one of the pods without depressurizing. Even if none of that were the case…

_Space is so vast_.

If he survived the explosion, there is no telling what direction it sent him spinning. He could be anywhere. _Goddess_.

Kaidan grips the shrapnel in the teeth of the hemostat, waits for her nod, and gives it one, sharp tug. Pain explodes in her thigh and she stifles a cry, but it comes free. Gobbets of blood float beside it, joining the rest that drift lazily in the small space.

She doesn’t need her helmet HUD to tell her the mexo is doing what it had been programmed to do. The cold, clammy sting of medigel swims across the wound. Kaidan already has his omnitool out, fabricating a field patch for her suit.

“You are a very good medic,” she tells him.

He doesn’t look at her, but his hands pause. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

He has. Kaidan has served with Shepard for five years. So short in her eyes, but Shepard has a way of making the time you spend with him feel like so much…more. A lump forms in her throat. _I just had coffee with him this morning._

“The pain meds will make you drowsy,” he tells her. “You should sleep if you can.”

“What about you?”

The lines of his forehead crease. _Act fast, think slow_ , he had told her, in what already feels like another lifetime.

“I have work to do.”

Work to do. Lives to rescue.

But the life he cares about most is the one he’s most helpless to save.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System - Alchera Orbit (+09h:52m)_

_Liara dreams of the beacon. Of blood, of death, of reapers that speak with red fire and the blowing of horns._

_She dreams of Shepard sitting in the mess with his lopsided smile, the cup of coffee with steam still curling over the brim._

_You are our only hope, she tells him._

_He takes a sip of the coffee. There never really was any hope, was there?_

_Someone taps her shoulder. When Liara turns, Caroline Grenado smiles with blood in her teeth._

_Liara, she says, the blood dribbling out in ribbons. Please don’t leave me behind._

~

Liara wakes with a start. This is not Dr. Chakwas’ office. There is no cot. There is no _Normandy._

“You’re safe,” Kaidan tells her. He floats near the ceiling of the pod, omnitool glowing around his arm, fingers pressed to his forehead, corners of his eyes pinched. She blinks away the dream while the rapid pounding of her heart subsides. When she shifts in her restraints she gets a little lightheaded.

“What time is it?” she mumbles, voice sticking in her dry throat.

“Almost 17:00,” he replies, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

Her heart sinks. “Any sign of him?” she asks.

Kaidan’s expression remains carefully, deliberately blank. “No. Pod sensors are too weak to cover a wide range. When a ship gets here we can cover more ground.”

She nods. Adams glances up from his haptic display, but says nothing. Barrett hovers in the empty seat next to Zambrano and continues conversing with her in low tones. Tali floats in her seat restraints, head lolling to one side. Liara stiffens in alarm, but Kaidan reassures her.

“She’s asleep. I checked her a few minutes ago. She’s got a fever, but otherwise she’s hanging tough.” His eyes narrow. “You look a little woozy. Need something to eat?”

She flushes a little and nods as he pushes off the ceiling with his hands and floats towards the emergency rations stored under his seat.

He sends an MRE in her direction. “See if that helps.”

It tumbles slowly towards her. She still almost misses it. Blast, even her hand is shaking. Her biotic display on the ship hadn’t been much, but on an empty stomach it takes a toll eventually. It’s been years since she’s put herself in a position to get a little weak after using biotics. Her mother would be so disappointed. Her glance darts back towards Kaidan as he drifts back towards the ceiling.

“What about you?” Liara asks. Human biotics have a higher calorie requirement than asari, as she recalls. She cannot be the only one feeling it.

That tight, pained look about his eyes returns as his attention reverts to his omnitool. “I’m fine. Adams, I need a check-in from pod six.”

“On it,” the engineer replies. When he gets the response, his eyes widen. “Gladstone flatlined.”

“ _What?_ ”

Adam stutters. “He…went into cardiac arrest and they couldn’t bring him back. They lost him.”

Kaidan swears and smashes a fist against the ceiling of the pod. “What the _hell_ happened?”

“Internal bleeding. Nothing…nothing they could do.”

_Gladstone._ Liara recognizes the name but cannot recall his face. A twinge of relief floats through her, followed by shame. Is this where she is, now? Relief that if someone has to die, at least it is not someone she knows?

“Dammit,” Kaidan mutters. He squeezes his eyes shut and puts a hand to his forehead. One inhale. One exhale. “How many other survivors are critical right now?”

Adam’s eyes dart back and forth as he reviews messages. “According to Dr. Chakwas’ last communication, four. Well, three now. Including Tali. And twelve serious but stable. For now.”

“Okay,” he says with a sigh that sounds more like an aged matriarch than it does a young human.

“Anything you want me to tell them, sir?” Adams asks.

Liara shudders. What do you tell a pod full of frightened people floating adrift with a dead body?

Kaidan’s shoulders slump as if he’d heard her thoughts. “He’d have something, wouldn’t he?”

Shepard always had something to say. Granted, sometimes it was not _helpful_. But Kaidan is right. When it mattered, when his crew needed him, he always found something.

_Stop thinking about him in the past tense_.

Kaidan huffs. “He thinks on his feet with words about as well as he does with guns. It’s infuriating.”

A smile threatens her lips, but it vanishes when Grenado’s bloody, outstretched hand floats to the front of her mind. She swallows. “Perhaps the words do not matter as much as…knowing they are not alone.”

He nods absently, gaze straying to that small shutter. “He told me almost exactly that just a couple of weeks ago on Earth.”

She almost presses him to elaborate. _Almost_. There is much that happened in Vancouver she knows nothing about, and if his expression is any judge, this should remain one of those things.

He looks back at Adams. “So that’s what we should tell them. They’re not alone.”

_Neither are you,_ Liara wants to say. But she does not believe Kaidan is thinking about himself just now. His thoughts are on the person who, if he is still alive, is very much alone.

_If._

No. No ifs. She cannot resort to ifs.

But now that the doubt has taken root it will not be so easy to weed out of her thoughts.

_If._

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System - Alchera Orbit (+14h:22m)_

For hours, they drift.

Liara takes a turn relieving Barrett and converses with Zambrano for a while. Learns she grew up on Benning, that her parents still live there. She misses her little brother. He’s a football player. _Goalie._ A good one. She tries to watch recordings of his games whenever her parents can send one.

Liara has spent so little time getting to know the other _Normandy_ crew members outside of Dr. Chakwas, Joker and the ground team. She has seen Zambrano many times in the CIC, but never knew until today she had a brother, or how much she’d always wanted to see an ocean on Earth. She finally had, in Vancouver. She’d thought it was beautiful.

Liara has never been very good at making friends, getting to know people. There is always too much _work_ to do.

But now…there is nothing but the stars glittering out the small shutter, and the slim hope that Shepard may still be alive.

So she asks Zambrano about Earth’s oceans, and what makes them so wonderous. The life in them, Zambrano tells her. The depths of the ocean hold more secrets than the stars.

Liara thinks of the reapers, red fire and the blowing of horns, and does not believe her. She changes the subject, and they talk about the rules of football. What a strange game.

_What would Caroline Grenado have said about her home, had you asked?_ She brushes a hand across the tacky smears of blood on her chestplate.

Eventually Adams takes over for her. As she shifts out of his way and back towards her seat, she takes a good look at Kaidan, who sits tucked into the chair beside hers, elbows resting on his knees, head in his hands, fingers digging into his temples, teeth clenched.

“Kaidan,” she says, worry threading her voice.

He mumbles something in response, but it doesn’t quite make it into words.

“Migraine?” she asks.

His nod is small, as though just the small dip of his chin is too much to ask for.

“Can I get you anything?” Not that there is much she has access to in the pod. But from what she has witnessed, when Kaidan gets a migraine, even saving him from bending over to get something from the medkit under his feet will save him some grief.

The shake of his head is nearly as imperceptible as the nod. “I’ll b’fine.”

At least the lighting in the pod is dim.

She lays a hand on his back and begins rubbing small circles between his shoulder blades, as she had seen Shepard do once in the Mako, when the pain had flared before they could return to the ship.

_Shepard_.

Her hand stills. Is this a transgression? Too informal? Too intimate? Something that belonged to Shepard? Humans have so many rules about touch she does not understand.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Is this…?”

“’s fine,” he mumbles. “I…thanks.”

She resumes the gentle circles. Aside from the low murmur of Adams and Zambrano across from them, the pod is quiet.

Her mind drifts with the stars. Had she and Kaidan ever just _talked_ , the way she just did with Zambrano? Of course they have spoken. Many times. But usually about work. About Shepard. So rarely about things like oceans, and the place he called home.

_Home_.

Just a few weeks ago, she had stood on a skybridge in Vancouver, gazing at the _Normandy’s_ hull side by side with Shepard before returning to this strange home she had built on board.

_Home doesn’t have to be a place_ , he’d told her. _Home can be people_.

Words spoken by the human who had grown up without ground beneath his feet. Places held so little meaning to him. It was people who gave him roots. People are so…fragile.

Kaidan had been Shepard’s home.

Liara had melded with Shepard three times during their chase for Saren, each driven by a need for information. Answers. He’d opened his mind to her so reluctantly, but never held in reserve anything she needed to find the answers they sought. Each time, she had borne witness to the monsters the prothean beacon unleashed in his mind. Each time, she had felt his fear, his rage, his desperation.

His _love_.

In its attempt to warn the future about the reapers, the prothean beacon had tried to overwrite Shepard’s own memories. Cruel, but breathtakingly effective in its simplicity. What greater way to drive someone to act than inflicting visions of the prothean extinction upon people they knew and loved?

So Shepard had watched the reapers destroy the person he cared about, over and over, in his dreams.

That’s when she had realized that the reapers did not frighten Shepard. Losing Kaidan is what frightened him. And yet he’d buried those feelings somewhere so deep even he couldn’t find them. Not until Vancouver. Not until that last night of the inquest, and whatever had transpired after the gala.

Does Kaidan share that same fear? Is he living the nightmare Shepard always woke up from?

Would Kaidan get to wake up from this one? Would any of them?

She continues rubbing circles into his back until her palm aches.

When she finally stops, the pod still drifts. The stars still glimmer outside the shutter. And there is still no sign of Shepard.

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System - Alchera Orbit (+26h:18m)_

Twenty-six hours after the _Normandy’s_ destruction, the _Marrakesh_ arrives. Liara’s heart sinks with relief.

Kaidan, haggard and groggy but functional, double checks everyone’s restraints as the cruiser establishes contact and prepares to bring them aboard.

The pod shudders under the clamp and bang of the airlock. Liara’s head spins as gravity asserts itself. Zambrano, still dosed with morphine, shrieks. Barrett murmurs something comforting. Tali stirs and moans. Her fever has crept higher over the past few hours.

It is like returning to the Citadel after Virmire all over again. But Tali had survived that. _She will survive this, too_.

When the pod door opens, two Alliance soldiers wait, fully armored with sidearms in hand, expressions grim behind their faceplates.

“Lieutenant Alenko?” one of them calls, shifting on the balls of her feet.

“Here,” Kaidan says, putting himself between the guns and the surviving crew in the pod.

“You in command?”

There’s a short pause before his brusque, “Yes. I have an injured quarian. We need to get her to your medbay immediately.”

“Understood. They’re waiting for her.” The soldiers stand aside and signal to another team with a stretcher, keeping their weapons close. Metal grinds as the pod settles into its new restraints, and one of the medics nearly drops his side of the stretcher, as though he expects an enemy to descend from the ceiling.

Kaidan kneels in front of Tali and unhooks her restraints, then helps her up. There isn’t much Liara can do in the limited space, so she holds Tali’s hand as they strap her in. Barrett gets to his feet, gently guiding Zambrano out of her seat.

The techs quickly back out of the pod with the stretcher, pulling Tali’s hand out of Liara’s grasp. “I’m coming,” she calls after them. “Tali, I’ll be right there.”

“Do any of you have medical training?” one of the soldiers asks. “We got a sitrep from the first pod we grabbed. We’re pulling a lot of injuries on board and are short staffed on medical.”

“I do,” Liara says.

The second soldier eyes her. “This ain’t an asari ship.”

“She’s been on the _Normandy_ for almost a year,” Kaidan snaps. “I’m H-3 and she trained under me. You want hands, ours are what you need.”

She nods crisply, duly chastised. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Kaidan slips an arm around Zambrano’s waist to help Barrett get her out. “I need to speak to your Captain, immediately.”

“I’ll, uh, see what I can do, but the bridge is locked down and the ship’s on high alert until we get the fuck out of here. Sir.”

Kaidan comes to an abrupt halt, and Barrett almost trips. “Commander Shepard is on the float and I need every sensor this ship’s got aimed at the debris field. _Find_ your Captain.”

The soldier’s eyes widen. “Yes, sir.”

Liara stares at her surroundings as the two soldiers escort them towards the medbay. The ship is huge, able to swallow _Normandy_ whole a few times over. Crew members scuttle through the corridors, heads bent, whispering, stopping to gape when they catch sight of the walking wounded.

“Why is everyone so…anxious?” she murmurs to Kaidan.

“We’re still in the Terminus systems,” Kaidan replies under his breath. “The _Marrakesh_ doesn’t have a stealth drive.”

“And the Alliance is not supposed to be here,” she finishes. _Of course, you idiot_. The _Normandy_ and Shepard’s status as a Spectre had made it so easy to forget how easily they could enter territory others could not.

He nods. “If the batarians catch us out here, it could start a war. They’re trying to get us on board and get the hell out of here as fast as possible. We’re lucky they came at all.”

A chill runs down her spine. “What happens when they have all the pods on board? Will they keep looking?”

His expression darkens. “Just hope they find him before that.”

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System - Alchera Orbit (+27h:22m)_

Dr. Chakwas blows into the _Marrakesh’s_ medbay covered in soot, with a nasty burn mark slashing her left cheek. But her shoulders are straight, her stride sure, and everyone moves out of her way.

“Where is Dr. Zamora and where is my patient?” she demands.

Liara steps away from one of the cots set up haphazard around the _Marrakesh’s_ medbay, wiping sweat off her brow. Polacek, the crew member on the cot, has a fractured collar bone and a few contusions. “Dr. Chakwas.” Liara’s voice sounds so small in comparison.

The doctor’s attention snaps to her, expression softening immediately. “Liara.” Two quick steps and she’s at Liara’s side, scanning her chestplate.

Liara swallows. “It…is not my blood.”

Dr. Chakwas lowers the scanner, face solemn. “How about your thigh? I hear you took shrapnel.”

“It’s patched for now. Further treatment can wait. Campostrini has second degree burns. Zambrano has a compound fracture and is still waiting for a bone knitter. No one has told me anything about Tali.” She closes her eyes trying to remember the others. Liara’s getting tired enough that she has to think harder to differentiate human treatments from asari. _Act fast, think slow._

Just like the rest of the ship, the infirmary is considerably larger than the _Normandy’s_ , but with the volume of wounded currently being tended, it feels small. In addition to the critical and serious cases, many more require treatment from burns, contusions, blunt force trauma, and other injuries. Regardless of the ailment, all bear the same shocked and bewildered expressions.

Between the medical teams responding to the airlocks and those prepping for surgeries, Tali’s included, the only ones left to attend to the triage are Kaidan, Liara, and two other field medics from the _Marrakesh_. Only three of the eight pods are aboard.

They’re going to need more cots.

Dr. Chakwas puts a hand on her shoulder and waits until Liara meets her gaze. “Thank you for your help. Where is Lt. Alenko?”

Liara nods towards the opposite side of the medbay, where Alenko paces with his head angled, speaking into his comm. The furrows in his brow run deeper every time she looks at him, and in between each patient he paces the room with almost frantic energy. It’s not just anxiety, either. Humans may have different physiology from asari, but she’s seen Shepard on the verge of a blood sugar crash too many times not to know what it looks like.

“He had a migraine in the pod, and has not eaten anything that I know of,” she says in a low tone. “Nor has he stopped moving since we were brought on board. I think he’s in trouble.”

Dr. Chakwas nods with understanding as a med tech hustles towards them, a flustered young woman with short, dark hair who glances left and right as she makes her way down a row of medical beds.

“Dr. Zamora is in the surgical suite with the quarian,” the tech informs her. “They set up a clean room.”

“He’ll need my help,” Dr. Chakwas insists, already heading in the direction the tech came from.

“No, doctor, you can’t go in there! You aren’t sterile!”

“We have comms, Servicewoman, unless I am _gravely_ mistaken, so _connect_ me to that surgery room!”

If the tech had any thoughts of arguing, they dissipate under Dr. Chakwas’ gaze. The two of them hustle towards the surgery suite. Across the medbay, Kaidan throws a hand in the air in disgust, paces some more, then braces himself against the nearest wall with an outstretched arm, head hanging. Liara murmurs something to Polacek and heads his direction.

“Kaidan?” she asks.

“Captain Costas won’t send a shuttle out,” he says without looking up. “They’re still scanning the debris field, but if something’s happened to his transponder, if his transmitter is out—” He bites off the rest of the sentence.

“There is still time,” Liara says, heart hammering in her chest. “There are still four pods to bring aboard. We still have _time_.”

She does not voice aloud what both of them are thinking – even if _they_ have time, Shepard’s is running out.

“You need to eat something,” she tells him. “Please.”

“I’m fine.”

A ship VI drones over the comm. “ _Medical team requested at airlock three.”_

Kaidan looks up, eyes roving the room until he finds the returning med tech. “Do you have another team?”

“I’m working on it,” she says.

“I’ll go. Get me a med kit.”

Liara makes a distressed sound. “Kaidan—”

“I’m _fine_ , Liara.” He starts gathering equipment without waiting for the tech to find a fresh kit. But before he can get out the door, Dr. Chakwas returns.

“You’ll stay right here,” she says, striding towards them. “I’ve requested someone bring you a full meal from the galley. You will sit here and you will eat it, and when you are finished and your hands are steady, you will resume triage. _That_ is an order.”

Kaidan blinks in surprise.

“I have authority in a medical emergency, Lieutenant, and I guarantee you this qualifies.” She takes him by both shoulders. “I need you to help the people in front of you. You cannot help those who are _not_.”

He nods, defeated. “Yes ma’am.”

She lets him go and gestures to Liara. “Liara, are you fit to assist?”

“Yes,” Liara says, quickly falling into step beside her. Upon exiting the medbay Dr. Chakwas pivots left and heads into the corridor, medkit in hand. How she knows where she is headed Liara cannot fathom, but every footfall is sure of itself.

“Did you get an update on Tali?” Liara asks.

“Yes. The injury itself is a simple repair. As you well know, it’s sepsis we have to worry about. I passed a few of the lessons I learned after Virmire on to Dr. Zamora. I hope it helps. Delaying treatment for this long certainly did not do her any favors.”

Several corridors later they arrive at an airlock – not the one Liara remembers coming in on – waiting for the cycle to complete. Out a narrow observation window, Liara makes out a _one_ painted on the side of the pod. Her heart stops.

Joker. The pod Shepard was supposed to board, but didn’t _._

_What if Kaidan was wrong? What if all this time we have been fretting over nothing?_

A lieutenant attempts to interfere with Dr. Chakwas when the airlock signal turns green and the door hisses open, but her crisp, inarguable voice deters him like he’s been slapped.

“Out of my way, Lieutenant, or I will court martial you, so _help_ me.”

He lets them pass.

The interior of the escape pod is a twin of the one Liara had spent twenty-six hours in, except for one stark difference.

The pod contains only one occupant.

Joker sits locked in his restraints, eerily still, eyes glassy. His left arm cants at a grotesque angle. Unlike Zambrano, the broken bone has not punctured the skin. Small mercies.

“Jeff,” Dr. Chakwas says gently, the spit and fire she’d spewed a moment ago now absent. She kneels beside him and unhooks the restraints with steady hands.

Joker stares straight ahead.

“Jeff,” she says, a little louder this time.

This time the helmsman stirs. The soft, strangled sound that catches in his throat tells Liara everything.

“He…was right there.”

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System - Alchera Orbit (+29h:01m)_

Grenado’s blood still spatters Liara’s chestplate. She finds a towel and scrubs at it, but it is now too dried to wipe away. She’d change out of her armor entirely if she could, but she has no time and nothing to change into. It all went down with the ship.

A corporal sits in the corner fabricating more bandages. Another sterilizes equipment. The ship only has four bone knitters. There are so many broken bones. Medigel reserves are running low enough that they are already rationing. Those who can afford to will have to wait until they reach the Citadel for proper treatment.

She grips the towel tight in her hands and hangs her head. Deep inhale. Deep exhale. Then she straightens up and finds the next patient, passing Kaidan’s mostly empty food tray where it lays abandoned on a portable table. True to his word, he’s on his feet and working, checking in with the bridge for updates on the hour. The more time that passes, the more he throws himself into the work.

They are running out of time.

Liara kneels beside a woman huddled on one of the cots. She’s younger than much of the crew, her blonde hair dark with soot and cinders. An ugly gash runs across her forehead, but Liara is fairly certain she recognizes her from the CIC.

“Servicewoman Khoury, isn’t it?”

She nods.

Liara begins a medical scan. “How are you doing?”

Khoury swallows. “I don’t know.”

Liara puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder, then bends down to dig through her medkit. She’ll need to restock before moving on to someone else.

When she looks back up her heart stops. It’s not Khoury anymore, it’s _Caroline,_ grinning with bloody teeth, a gaping hole in her chest with slivers of rib poking through like bared teeth.

Liara swallows a shriek, lurches to her feet and backpeddles, nearly losing her balance and spilling the contents of the medkit. A few meters away Kaidan’s head snaps up.

“Liara!” He makes a beeline for her. “Liara, what happened?”

She stares at Grenado, no, not Grenado, _Khoury,_ with blood on her face but not in her teeth, and her chest solid and whole. “Nothing,” she stammers. “I just…need a minute.”

Kaidan takes her by the shoulder, steers her away to an empty cot and forces her to sit. He hands her a canteen. “Here. Drink something.”

She takes a swig and hands it back to him, then rests an elbow on her knee and props her forehead in her hand.

“Take a deep breath,” he tells her.

She closes her eyes. Inhale. Exhale.

“Better?”

She nods.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” she repeats. _I killed Caroline Grenado._ “Have they found anything?”

Kaidan presses his lips into a thin line. She’s manipulating him and she knows it, but damn it, if they can find Shepard maybe killing Caroline will somehow be justified.

_You did what you promised. You did not leave her alone._

“No,” Kaidan says at last. “But they’re still looking. He wouldn’t…he’s _alive_ , Liara. It’s not going to end like _this._ Of all the ways…it’s _not_ going to be this.”

She nods, listless. _It’s not going to end like this_.

Goddess…but what if it does?

~

_2183 – Omega Nebula – Amada System - Alchera Orbit (+30h:43m)_

No transponder signal. No lifesigns in the debris field, or beyond it. The last pod is aboard. Kaidan had gone to greet it, but as the injured now arrive at the overcrowded medbay, he is not among them.

The ship’s VI announces preparations for departure.

They are out of time. She looks wildly about the medbay. Dr. Chakwas tends to Zambrano with a bone knitter she had finally gotten her hands on. Several other medics from the _Marrakesh_ buzz about the crowded space. Every bone in her body aches. Her leg throbs from the shrapnel wound. Her hands cramp from using the medigel and dermal injectors. She is not done here. More people need help.

But the ship is going to _leave_.

Without giving herself time to think she flees the medbay, grabs the first soldier she sees by the arm and looks him right in the eye. “I must find Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko.”

“I…don’t know who that is,” he stammers. The soldier, a corporal perhaps, blinks at her. He is young, so young, but it is likely even he will grow old and die before the reapers ever come to pass. He does not understand. _No_ one on this ship understands. Even Kaidan is simply trying to save someone he loves. Liara is trying to save them _all_.

She channels every ounce of Benezia she possesses. “He’s the acting commander of the _SSV Normandy_ and you will _find_ him for me.”

He nods, offering no further protest, and after a quick query of the ship’s VI begins walking.

“Faster,” Liara murmurs. _Act fast, think slow._

She _is_ thinking slowly. The problem is getting anyone to act _quickly_.

They ascend three decks and walk through what feels like half the ship. She is at a loss to determine _where_ they are, other than somewhere on the starboard side. To her left a long bay of narrow windows look out over Alchera, its surface shrouded by thick whorls of cloud.

Ahead of them, voices argue in the corridor. _Kaidan_. She pushes ahead of the corporal at a jog. When she rounds the corner, Kaidan gestures out the bay of windows, forehead drawn, his normally impeccable hair limp and disheveled. Before him stands an older woman, short, but with an undeniable presence. The _Marrakesh’s_ captain.

“Sir, we _can’t_ leave,” Kaidan says. “We have to keep looking.”

“This system is crawling with batarians,” the captain informs him, arms crossed behind her back, expression stern. Though Kaidan’s height advantage forces her to look up, everything about her posture, voice, and expression make it very clear she is in control of the conversation. “We still don’t know who or _what_ attacked your ship, and our very presence is an act of war. Now that all pods are aboard we can’t delay our departure.”

“That’s Commander _Shepard_ out there,” Kaidan insists, fingers curling. The gravity well flexes. “He saved the Citadel. He saved us _all_. We can’t _leave_ him here!”

The captain sighs, though not without sympathy. “If his transponder was active we’d have found it by now. Even if he survived the explosion he’s more than thirty hours on the float. The odds of finding him are even smaller than the odds he’s still got oxygen.”

“He’s an N7. He earned that designation setting a survival record in conditions _exactly_ like this. He _knows_ how to survive. We can’t leave until we’ve exhausted all hope. He’s _alive_.”

The captain puts a hand on Kaidan’s shoulder, and the kindness in the gesture hits Liara harder than the words. “We _have_ exhausted all hope. Lieutenant, I appreciate how difficult this is. But I’ve got over three hundred people on this boat, and I’m responsible for every single one of them. I can’t risk their lives for one soldier.”

_He is not one soldier!_ Liara wants to scream. _He’s the answer to everything!_

The captain dismisses Kaidan with a nod and walks away, acknowledging Liara as she passes without pausing. Kaidan stares after her, stricken.

His armor bears the scars of the _Normandy’s_ final moments. A gash in his chestplate. Scouring on the left pauldron. Dust and soot smeared across the plating.

Desperate hope still gleams in his eyes, but it is dying with terrible swiftness.

A heavy, leaden feeling settles in her gut. _There never was hope, was there?_

Shepard is dead. And he may have taken their future with him.

Kaidan wets his lips. “Liara.”

She comes to his side. _You are not alone_ , she wants to say, but she cannot pry the words from her throat. Because they _are_ alone. Space is so vast. And yet not vast enough to spare them from the monsters lurking between the stars.

_There never was hope_.

The deckplates creak as the _Marrakesh’s_ drive spins up. Kaidan grips the railing that lines the corridor and turns to the marbled planet spinning so peacefully below them. The familiar flash of vertigo hits as the ship transitions to FTL.

Kaidan’s fingers tighten around the railing. “No.”

Alchera vanishes in a streak of starlight.


	4. This Hole You Left

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard is something different to everyone.

_There's blood been spilt in this hole you left_   
_Your veins run dry with emptiness_   
_This worn out shell has cost you dear_

[x](https://open.spotify.com/track/68DIBWxKHHMqyzNFXR7Tkt?si=0nGqBl08SI-49R3FhRoNAA%E2%80%9D)

**This Hole You Left**

_2183 – Earth – Vancouver (+39h:21m)_

Lora Alenko takes another sip of her tea, fervently wishing for at least the eighth time it was a glass of wine, and nods politely. Lunch with Melia Eccles is a monthly chore she’d love to get out of, but if she wants to keep export prices for the fruit wine under control, nurturing the relationship with Eccles Exports is a necessary evil. Melia isn’t a _bad_ person. Not _really_. She’s just exhausting.

At least the restaurant is nice. Lora’s been meaning to try this place since it opened a few months ago, the top floor of a new tower near the spaceport with a gorgeous view of the bay _and_ good food, two things that do not necessarily go hand in hand. It’s been ages since she’s had a proper B.C. roll. If nothing else, Melia has excellent taste.

“I don’t know why the proposed tariff reforms haven’t passed,” Melia says before taking a bite of her shrimp. She’s one of those people who doesn’t fear cocktail sauce or red wine while wearing a white dress. It’s like the woman has kinetic shielding specifically calibrated to repel a mess. Lora, on the other hand, has spent so much time around horses there isn’t a single article of white clothing in her closet.

“They hurt small businesses,” Lora replies. She should tread carefully on this one; the meal is about nurturing a relationship, not being _right_ , but she can’t help it sometimes.

“Is there such a thing as a small business in this economy anymore?” Melia asks.

Lora raises an eyebrow. Bridlespur Orchard is perhaps the perfect example of a small business finding success in an intergalactic economy. This is why Melia is so damned exhausting.

But before she can answer, her omnitool flashes. She frowns and looks down at her arm. It’s a message from Marc. _SOS. Call now._

A chill runs down her spine. SOS isn’t something Marc throws around lightly. She’d gotten an SOS from him when he’d found Apollo, the warmblood she’d ridden for years, with a leg stuck through the paddock fence, and the day they’d learned about Vyrnnus.

_Kaidan._

“Melia,” she murmurs. “Excuse me, I have to take this.” She stands up without waiting for a response and hurries towards the restroom, fishing an earpiece out of her purse.

“Marc?” she asks when the line clicks, heart hammering in her throat. “What’s going on?”

_“Lora! Where are you?”_

“Still at the restaurant with Melia.” She smooths her dress with a nervous hand. “You know how much she likes to talk.”

“ _Go home. Not to the condo. Head for the orchard. Right now.”_

Her heart beats louder. “Why?” _Please don’t say it._

_“I got a heads up from Colonel Petrone. The news is about to break, and when it does all the reporters in Vancouver plus everyone in your address book is going to be knocking on our door. Get out to the orchard and don’t look at the feeds. None of them know what’s going on. I’m going to Command right now to get something firsthand and then I’m coming to you. Got it?”_

“Marc,” she says, her voice leaden. “It’s Kaidan, isn’t it.”

A pause follows, long enough to confirm her worst fears. _“Something happened to the_ Normandy.”

~

_2183 – Arcturus System – SSV Everest (+40h:02m)_

Admiral Steven Hackett looks up when Major Farrow enters his office off the _Everest’s_ bridge, clears her throat and stands at attention, chin raised. His eyes narrow. Her nervous swallow tells him everything he needs to know, but he supposes he needs to hear it out loud. He sets his datapad down, stands, and levels his gaze.

“Report, Major.”

“We received the casualty list from the _SSV Normandy,_ sir. Mission debrief still pending, figured you wanted this straight away.”

Hackett nods to his desk. Farrow sets the datapad down, relief etched across her face as she salutes and all but dismisses herself back out the door before he can read it.

When the door slides closed behind her Hackett scowls at the datapad before reaching for it and activating the screen. The list has twenty-two names on it. He only cares about one.

_Shepard, Sam_

He works his jaw.

Shepard, Sam. Son of Hannah and Daniel Shepard, promoted to Staff Commander nine months ago, at the time of his transfer from the _SSV Myeongnyang_ to the _SSV Normandy_. Achieved N7 in 2181, nearly fucked himself and everyone else during the Torfan shitshow in 2178.

Half the Alliance had wanted to crucify Shepard for Torfan. Hackett had rammed through a promotion to Lieutenant Commander and given him a medal.

Torfan just showed how far Shepard was willing to go when someone else was doing the thinking for him. Hackett could only imagine what he’d do if the Alliance let him think for himself.

Turns out he would steal a prototype frigate, force the Alliance to mobilize, save the galaxy from an invasion risk no one else believed existed, and win humanity a seat on the Council.

And after his explosive testimony at the inquest a few weeks ago, Hackett was pretty sure Shepard was only getting warmed up.

He _needed_ Shepard. The short-sighted politicians over at Command didn’t recognize what kind of a weapon he was in their hands. Against the reapers, maybe the only weapon that would matter.

Hackett did.

What a waste.

This is going to leave a hole Hackett’s not sure he can patch. The political wheels of the Alliance are already turning faster than he can snarl the gears. Shepard was the face of all of it. The one who could carry the bullhorn and yell until he was hoarse, while Hackett worked quietly behind the scenes.

Hackett’s made a career out of adapting, and for three decades he’s done it better than anyone else in the Alliance.

But the list of people who can replace Shepard doesn’t exist.

He rubs the bridge of his nose, then speaks into his comm. “Get me an open channel to the _Kilimanjaro_. I need to speak with Captain Hannah Shepard, top priority.”

_“Sir, comm buoy traffic is extremely high—”_

“Put my name on it and put it at the top of the queue,” he snaps. “I want Captain Shepard on my vidscreen ASAP.”

_“Yes, sir.”_

It still takes twenty minutes before the green light blinks on his comm panel. He straightens his uniform and takes a seat before turning on the screen.

He’d last seen Hannah Shepard at the N7 ceremony on Arcturus. She hasn’t changed much, as stiff and stern as always, wearing a perfunctory smile that cuts right to the bone. Ambitious. Career driven. A lot for a kid to live up to, much less surpass.

“ _Admiral Hackett,_ ” she says, smoothing a stray strand of greying hair behind her ear. _“This is…unexpected.”_

“I’m sorry, Captain, but I fear you already know why I’m calling,” he says. Captain Shepard has a few things in common with her son, at least, and not wanting to be coddled is one of them.

Shepard’s mother pulls her shoulders back, throat tightening. “ _Yes, I suppose I do.”_

“As you are aware by now, the _SSV Normandy_ was destroyed over Alchera about forty hours ago. It is my sad duty to inform you that your son, Sam, has been confirmed one of the casualties.”

She remains perfectly still, expression frozen in place. Her lips press into a thin line. “ _I see.”_

“Your son was a hero, Captain. He did his uniform, and you, proud.”

She drops her chin in a terse nod. _“Thank you, Admiral.”_

Hackett exhales through his nose. “Given recent events, this is sure to be a very public affair. Likely with an equally public memorial. I’ll keep you informed of the developments and facilitate the _Kilimanjaro’s_ participation.”

_“I appreciate that.”_

There should be more to say in moments like this. But there isn’t. Not really.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Hannah.”

This time she holds her head high. _“I knew the risks. So did he.”_ She swallows. _“If you will excuse me, Admiral, it sounds like I have a few calls to make.”_

He nods. She looks away briefly before fixing him back in her sights, like there’s something else she wants to say. Instead she forces that perfunctory smile back into place. “ _Thank you, sir.”_

The call disconnects. Hackett stares at the blank screen before paging Major Farrow.

_“Sir?”_

“Get me the personnel file on Lieutenant Alenko from the _Normandy_. The complete file.” _Classified bullshit and all._

_“Yes, sir, right away.”_

There isn’t a list of people who can replace Shepard. Time to make one. Hackett exhales, gaze falling to the datapad on his desk, _Shepard, Sam_ still displayed.

He picks it up and hurls it at the wall. It cracks, screen flickering to black as it clatters to the floor.

What a goddamned _waste_.

~

_2183 – Interstellar Space – SSV Marrakesh (+52h:55m)_

Joker stares out the window of a starboard observation deck on the _Marrakesh._ He’d almost forgotten what it was like to look at the stars without a haptic interface under his fingers, be a passenger instead of a helmsman. The ship moves and he’s not ready for it. These engines don’t hum the right way.

The _Marrakesh_ sure as hell isn’t the _Normandy_.

With the lights off, room to himself, it’s almost like being back in the pod, where he’d watched pieces of his ship, his _life_ , float past the small shutter for twenty-nine hours before the cruiser finally pulled him on board.

He could have closed the shutters. Blocked it all out. Instead he’d watched the _Normandy’s_ remains tumble silently towards Alchera for all twenty-nine of those hours. Maybe they’d get caught in the gravity well and come to rest on the snowy surface. Maybe they’d continue past, floating for eternity, eventually wind up in some other galaxy.

 _She’s not just a ship to me, you know,_ he’d said, barely two weeks ago back on Earth, moments before taking the stand in front of a panel of admirals and essentially telling them to go fuck themselves.

 _I know_ , Shepard had said, with that fucking grin of his.

_I’d go down with that ship._

_Not while I’m around._

He should have abandoned ship. The escape pod was right there. He could have given up the _Normandy_ at any time. All he had to do was step over the bodies of Pressly. Chase. All he had to do was leave them all behind.

Instead he’d stayed, and Shepard had made good on his word.

_I’d go down with that ship._

_Not while I’m around_.

One minute Pressly had been drinking his coffee and griping while Chase told some story about a flight sim incident that almost got her kicked out of the Academy. The next minute they were dead, everyone in the CIC was getting sucked into space and Joker was flying a dead stick.

He should have abandoned ship.

Instead he’d spent twenty-nine hours alone in that pod, nothing but a broken arm, a lot of morphine, the _Normandy’s_ entrails drifting by the window and an empty space where Shepard should have been.

_I’d go down with that ship._

_Not while I’m around_.

But Joker would rather be back in the pod than here on the _Marrakesh,_ where Dr. Chakwas checks on his status every five minutes. Where Tali is in a medical coma. Where Liara looks at him like the world just ended. Where Alenko won’t look at him at all.

The observation lounge is as far away from the medbay as he can get without mechanized assistance. They’d fabricated new crutches for him, but with the arm still healing – fuck, bone knitters _itch –_ he’s even more limited than usual.

And to hell with asking for help. Not after Shepard had _died_ for him.

_I’d go down with that ship._

_Not while I’m around_.

The door to the lounge slides open, depositing a square of light on Joker’s back.

“Occupied,” he calls without turning around.

As the door starts to slide closed, he catches Kaidan’s reflection in the glass. _Fuck._ “Wait.”

Kaidan heard him, Joker’s _positive_ he heard, but all he gets is Kaidan’s back as the door shuts. He grabs a crutch and hobbles to the door as fast as the sore arm can manage. Plenty of people mill in the corridor outside, but none of them Alenko.

Fuck. He puts a hand to his face. After twenty-nine hours in the pod all the lights on the _Marrakesh_ are too bright.

What would he even say if Kaidan acknowledged him? _Sorry I got him killed? Sorry he had to come for me and leave you behind? Sorry I told you it was ok to be happy?_

What good would that do? He doesn’t want Kaidan’s forgiveness. He’s pretty damned sure Kaidan doesn’t want to give it, either.

Maybe he wants the shouting. Maybe if Kaidan would just lose his mind and let him have it, it would shatter the silence of that pod and fill the gaping hole left by the person who wasn’t in it.

_I’d go down with that ship._

_Not while I’m around_.

He retreats into the darkened lounge. Kaidan doesn’t return.

~

_2183 – Interstellar Space – SSV Marrakesh (+53h:28m)_

Thirty-six years in space and Karin Chakwas has never lost a ship.

She clutches a datapad with disembark instructions for the _Normandy’s_ wounded crew. They’ll reach the Citadel within the hour and transfer the survivors to the Alliance embassy to receive further treatment and reassignment. Then she’ll switch from triage to death certificates.

She won’t think about that right now.

The harried med tech – Menendez, her name might be? – hands her the latest updates on Tali. They induced a medical coma a few hours ago. The fever is getting out of control. They need a quarian physician. Karin has tried everything she knows, everything she has learned since Tali came aboard, but it isn’t enough.

Nothing is enough right now.

She’d reached out to Dr. Rezorah, the doctor who had helped her treat Tali after Virmire. Too much to hope she would be anywhere near the Citadel, but a quarian research ship on the fringes of the Traverse has a physician aboard and is only one jump from Widow. They might reach the Citadel before the _Marrakesh._

“No improvement,” Karin murmurs aloud. “But at least she’s not getting worse. I’ll take it.”

The med tech, maybe it’s not Menendez, maybe it’s Sandoval, bites her lip. “Tracked a fresh uniform down if you want it.”

Karin glances down at herself. The cloth on her left shoulder is charred from the bulkhead that exploded in the medbay. The right knee is ripped from where she tried to free Greico from under the fallen beam before he lost his pulse. The mix of smoke, blood, and antiseptic is not a pleasant scent, and she reeks of it.

“Thank you…” She fumbles for the name, but now she thinks she might be wrong on both counts, so she doesn’t bother. “I’ll change as soon as I have a moment. First I need to find Comman…Lieutenant Alenko to sign off on the transfers, then Lieutenant Moreau. He’s due another round of painkillers.”

The tech nods. Karin takes a deep breath, swaying just a little on her feet. _Don’t you dare,_ she thinks. She has a job to do, and it’s not finished yet.

She finds Alenko in a port observation lounge, one shoulder resting against the window, arms folded across his chest as he gazes out at the stars. A datapad hangs from one hand.

“Lieutenant,” she says.

He turns his head ever so slightly to acknowledge her. His eyes are red, perhaps from lack of sleep, perhaps grief, perhaps both. She is fairly certain he has not closed his eyes since last waking up on the _Normandy_ , something she can assume with confidence since neither has she.

“Medical transfers?” he asks.

She straightens a little before coming close enough to offer him the datapad. “We’re docking at the Citadel within the hour. I need approval from the _Normandy’s_ commanding officer to transfer the wounded to the Citadel medical system.”

Kaidan stares at the datapad in her hand, but doesn’t move.

“Kaidan,” she says, gentle this time.

He nods and takes it from her, skims it quickly before adding his thumbprint and handing it back.

“Thank you, sir.” She hesitates. “I could order you to get some rest, you know.”

“I’ll sleep when you sleep.”

“Fair enough,” she says with a sigh. “For what it’s worth, you’ve done brilliantly. You kept everyone calm. Took care of all of us. We couldn’t have been in better hands.”

His posture tightens, expression growing even more distant. _Bollocks_. Had she not been so tired, she would have phrased that…differently.

She’s so tired. But they’re almost there. Almost…well. Not home. Home no longer exists. But perhaps they’re almost free from purgatory. Some of them, anyway.

“Have you seen Jeff?”

Alenko stares a hole right through her before responding. “Starboard observation.”

She parses this for a moment – maybe too many moments, the passage of time is starting to feel fuzzy – before responding. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“I know.”

“Shepard—”

“ _Please_.”

He’s used that tone only once before. Kaidan has always borne his migraines with far more grace than she probably would in his place, but there had been one moment after Feros, in the throes of the worst and longest lasting one she had seen him endure, when he’d begged, _pleaded_ for it to stop. She’d knocked him out with a sedative.

She can’t do that this time. He has a job to do, just like she does. She gives Kaidan one last look before retreating towards the door.

“We left him, Karin.”

She stops. Turns. Kaidan’s attention is back on the window. Had he actually spoken, or is she simply imagining it? Though if she’s reached the point of auditory hallucinations perhaps she _should_ get some sleep.

She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It’s limp, stringy. She must look a fright. More than sleep and a change of clothes she wants a shower. _Later_. She has a job to do.

“There was nothing we could do,” she says.

“We don’t know that.”

“There was no transponder signal,” she tells him, saying out loud everything she’s been repeating to herself. “We were in hostile territory, with over twenty injured crew. He was _gone_ , Kaidan.”

His fingers curl, eyes still trained on the window.

She puts a hand to her forehead. Between Virmire, triage on the Citadel and this it’s too much. Before today she’s never felt old. Tears sting the corner of her eyes and she swears under her breath. Not here. Not today. Tears are something for tomorrow. Right now, she has a _job to do_.

“I’ll be in the medbay if you need me,” she says, without wavering.

He does not stop her, but by the time she sees to Jeff and returns to the medbay, Kaidan is there, issuing orders and comforting shell-shocked crewmen still on their feet. When Zambrano starts to cry he puts a hand on her shoulder and whispers something in her ear. She nods, marshals herself, and holds her chin up.

When the _Marrakesh_ docks, he helps Karin maneuver Tali’s gurney to the airlock while she fills him in on the quarian’s condition. He nods, thanks her, and gives Tali one last look.

This is where it gets even harder. Tali isn’t Alliance. Once they’re through that airlock, by Alliance protocols she is no longer either of their concern.

Dr. Chawas plans to _make_ it her concern. Whatever the Alliance plans to do with her, with _any_ of them, she’ll dig her heels in and fight it tooth and nail until she’s confident Tali will be back on her feet.

Because she _will_ be, dammit, the galaxy _owes_ them all that much.

But god, will the galaxy listen? It didn’t listen to Shepard, the person who’d saved it.

Kaidan catches her eye as she follows the gurney into the airlock. In this moment he is just like them, looking to her for reassurance, to swallow her own doubts and tell him with conviction that his colleague, his _friend_ will be all right. It’s her job, and he needs her to do it.

But she almost falters. Her voice almost catches, she almost chokes out, ‘I don’t know what will happen to her,’ instead of, ‘she’s going to be fine.’

Kaidan wouldn’t fault her if she did. Instead he would take her by the arm and comfort her just like he did Zambrano, because he has a job to do just like she does. The moment she is in need, he will place his own aside to see to it hers are met.

So instead of doubt she forces a smile and says in a steady voice, “She’ll be fine, Kaidan. I’ll make sure of it.”

These are still her shipmates, after all. For a few minutes, maybe a few hours longer. They still need her.

She’s so tired. But she’s not finished yet.

~

_2183 – Serpent Nebula – Widow System – Citadel (+56h:49m)_

This far past the end of his regular shift, Garrus doesn’t recognize any of the faces milling about the C-Sec office and isn’t inclined to introduce himself. He ran out of energy for introductions twelve hours ago, when he reported for duty after lying awake and staring at the ceiling for a few hours while the muted newsfeeds continuously ran file footage of the _Normandy,_ mixed with the occasional headshot of Shepard and clips of the geth on the Citadel _._ Always the geth. Never Sovereign.

Once, Garrus turned up the volume to hear the insane story they’ve contrived to suggest the geth were responsible for the bodies he’s still pulling from the rubble of Tayseri Ward. But after hearing Emily Wong declare, “ _while still unconfirmed by the Alliance, early reports name Commander Shepard among the casualties,”_ he’d muted it again. Though he couldn’t bring himself to turn it off.

As if watching it repeat over and over will somehow atone for the fact that he wasn’t there.

He checks his omnitool again. Nothing. Queries to Alenko, Liara, Tali, and Joker sit at the top of his outgoing messages. Hell, he’d even tried Pressly. The message he’d written to Shepard remains a draft. He can’t bring himself to hit send.

They can’t all be dead. Spirits, they can’t _all_ be dead.

_You should have been there._

Shepard had given him every opportunity to stay on the _Normandy_. _Asked_ him to stay. Savior of the Citadel, a _Spectre_ , the human who was everything he aspired to be, had asked him to stay.

To hell with all that. His _friend_ had asked him to stay. Instead, he’d stood in front of the viewing windows and watched as Joker spun up the drive, guided the _Normandy_ outside of the Citadel’s envelope and disappeared into the blue-lit gas of the Serpent Nebula without him.

That had been just over four weeks ago. Four weeks. And if the reports are accurate, it’s all gone.

Dammit, why hadn’t he stayed on that ship?

He grabs another report from the top of the pile on his desk, which is getting tall enough to sway in the breeze.

This is why. Because Saren had obliterated the Citadel, and Shepard, _damn_ him, had made him believe he could make a difference. He thought he could make it here. Crazy thing, having to fill out a form every time you find a corpse. He’s got three more to add to the list after today.

He’s tired. His feet hurt. The only reason he’s even at his desk is because it’s closer than his quarters, and the temptation to sit was greater than his desire to be anywhere but here.

He puts the report in his hands back on the pile and leans back in his chair. There’s no guarantee the _Normandy_ survivors – if there are any – would come to the Citadel, but if Liara or Tali are alive the Alliance might not be keen on bringing them to Arcturus. Besides, if they really were out in the Terminus, the Citadel is a closer relay jump.

They’d come _here_. He knows it in his bones. But he can’t get through to Captain Anderson, and after pulling in every favor he can think of, no one has coughed up any clues about what ship they might be on.

There have to be survivors.

His omnitool pings. When he checks the message notification his heart drops to his feet. He’d set up alerts for all of their names should they appear on a hospital admissions list anywhere on the Citadel. Abuse of his C-Sec power no doubt, but he’ll deal with the fallout later. Especially since he now has a hit.

 _Zorah, Tali, Huerta Memorial._ With an admission stamp from forty minutes ago.

 _Spirits_.

He bolts out of his chair and heads to the nearest elevator. Within half an hour he’s arguing with a receptionist at the front desk who has no intention of letting him into an ICU unit to see a wounded quarian he has no connection to.

No connection to. Garrus almost tells her _just_ how connected they are. _We took down Saren together. Fought rachni together. Catalogued geth together. I held her damn hand while she recovered from a bullet wound after Virmire. We joked about levo food and talked about the things we missed from home, and how out of place we felt on a ship crewed by aliens._

But instead of telling her that, he flashes a C-Sec badge and puts on what Shepard had called “the bad cop routine.” Had it been Shepard, it probably would have worked.

Garrus isn’t Shepard.

He’s halfway through some very heated bullshit even he doesn’t buy about interfering with C-Sec business and the security of the galaxy being at stake when someone taps him on the shoulder. A very exhausted asari stands behind him.

“I thought that shouting sounded familiar,” she says with a wry smile.

“Liara,” he says, mandibles flaring. Before she can say anything else, he pulls her into a hug. She returns it, tentatively.

“What the hell happened?” he asks, leaning back and holding her at arm’s length. “Is she all right? Nobody will tell me a damn thing.”

She closes her eyes briefly, shoulders sagging into his talons enough that Garrus fears if he lets her go she might actually fall. “She took shrapnel to the shoulder. We did what we could but it was almost thirty hours before we were rescued, so she is fighting a blood infection. They have her in a quarantine unit. A quarian physician is here. Come on. We cannot go in, but I will take you to her.”

The receptionist opens her mouth to argue, but Liara fixes her with a stare worthy of her mother. “He’s with me.”

Garrus gets no further resistance.

The smell of antiseptic and alcohol hit Garrus’ nose as soon as they pass into the patient wards. Amazing how those smells transcend species. Even after spending just one night trapped in Dr. Chawas’ medbay with Wrex and a host of rachni burns between them, he’d been ready to stick his head out an airlock.

But the smell doesn’t matter, because Tali’s alive. Liara’s alive. _What about the others_ remains frozen on his mandibles.

Liara comes to a stop outside a private room. Through the glass window, Tali’s unmistakable purple cowl lays still within a vacuum-sealed bed. So still. Even after Virmire she’d been conscious. Moving.

“Liara,” Garrus says with a low flange in his subharmonics. “What happened? The Alliance locked down access. I can’t get through to anyone who might have answers.”

She swallows. “I do not…know. It happened so quickly. We had coffee and then the ship came apart. Tali and Adams and I were going to die in the elevator. But Kaidan came for us.”

Garrus’ plates tighten. “And Shepard?”

Liara’s expression shifts, like the ripple of a kinetic barrier on the verge of failure. “He’s dead.”

 _Dead._ Funny, after hearing it on the newsfeeds for hours he didn’t think it would hit this hard. “Liara. I’m sorry. I should have been there.”

She shakes her head, gazing in Tali’s direction. “It happened so fast. He was having coffee. They were going to take the Mako down to the surface. Everything was _fine._ We had time. We had hope. Then the ship came apart. Shepard went to rescue Joker, and sent Kaidan to come get us out of the shaft. People were dying, the engine room caught fire and Grenado—” she inhales sharply.

Garrus puts a hand on her shoulder. “I should have been there,” he repeats.

That kinetic barrier reaches its limit and her face crumbles. She puts her hands to her face, chest heaving with the effort of keeping her composure in check.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I have not had much sleep, and—”

Garrus pulls her into another hug, one she doesn’t resist. His eyes drift to Tali while Liara sobs into his carapace.

 _They needed you, and you weren’t there_.

He thinks of Shepard’s careless grin, the way he’d clapped Garrus on the back before jogging towards the _Normandy’s_ airlock that last time. _If you ever change your mind, you know how to find me,_ he’d said. _We’ll pick you up on the next pass._

He’d changed his mind, all right.

But he’d changed it too late.

~

_2183 – Serpent Nebula – Widow System – Citadel (+70h:32m)_

Captain David Anderson stares out at the repair crews moving around the Presidium. Here, from the safe retreat of his office, it doesn’t look so bad. Scaffolding covers the damaged bridge. Debris still floats in the lake, turning the serene blue water a murky brown. The air circulators have almost cycled out the smell of soot and burnt alloy, but a trace of it still lingers. If he leans out far enough, the tip of the relay Shepard had barreled through using nothing but an M-35 Mako just four weeks ago is barely visible on his right periphery.

He doesn’t lean. Just as he doesn’t look at the datapad in his hand. Hearing the words come out of Joker’s mouth was enough. Seeing the helmsman’s _face_ was enough. Anderson had remarked once to Shepard that he’d like to be there the day someone wiped the smartass off Joker’s face.

Shepard had snorted. _Not me, sir,_ he’d said. _If he gives up the smartass that probably means I’m fucked. I’d prefer my pilot remain an asshole at all times._

Shepard had been right, of course.

Anderson wipes a thumb across the corner of his eye. It’s all right. No one here to see.

 _They came back around for another pass_ , Joker had said, in a voice that was dull, dead, about as far a cry as you could get from the insubordinate ass who’d gone off on the stand in Vancouver just two weeks ago _._ Shepard had to be to blame for that display. Politics had never been his game.

_We lost gravity right as he shoved me in the pod. Momentum from the blast…kicked him the wrong way. I didn’t see what happened after the door closed, but I didn’t need to. Drive core implosion doesn’t leave much to the imagination._

Anderson’s fingers grip the datapad harder. No. It doesn’t. That doesn’t stop his mind from filling in the blanks anyway.

All Shepard’s training. All the hell he’d put himself through to earn that N7 designation. There couldn’t have been a person more prepared to live through the _Normandy’s_ destruction. And in the end, the realities of space had still won.

At least it had probably been quick. Probably.

The door to his office hisses open. For a moment, Anderson expects it to be Shepard. It _should_ be Shepard. That son of a bitch has been putting Anderson’s heart in his throat since he was fourteen years old, but he’s never had the audacity to actually die. Hell, the kid had taken a reaper to the face and shrugged it off.

 _Kid._ Shepard hasn’t been a kid in a long time, maybe never really was to begin with. But to Anderson, some part of Shepard would always be that fourteen-year-old with the thousand-watt grin and a glimmer in his eye that usually meant Anderson’s heart was about to leap into his throat. The smile had faded over time, but not that damned glimmer. He’d last seen it right here on the Citadel, when he’d stood up from the table at Flux Casino with plans to steal the _Normandy_ right out from under the Council’s nose. And Anderson had helped him do it.

This can’t be how it ends. It _can’t._

A voice speaks up behind him, crisp, formal. “You wanted to see me, sir.”

His expression tightens, but he smooths it out before he turns around. Lieutenant Alenko stands just inside the door to his office, shoulders straight, hands clasped behind his back, chin in the air. Anderson can’t shake the feeling there’s an empty space next to him.

Probably because he’s never seen Alenko without Shepard.

Kaidan Alenko. Damndest thing.

 _Who do you want on your marine detail?_ Anderson had asked, after informing Shepard he was being transferred off the _Myeongnyang_ and onto the _Normandy_.

_You’re asking me?_

_I’m naming you XO. If there’s someone you want, just say the word._

_Alenko._

Anderson hadn’t had a chance to blink before the name was out of Shepard’s mouth. Not another N. Not someone from the special ops teams Shepard had run when Anderson could pry him out of Captain Oseguera’s hands. He wanted the biotic from the ‘ _Yang_.

Hackett was the one who’d argued for assigning Alenko to Shepard’s detail five years ago, when the dust from Torfan had finally settled. Anderson had thought it would be a mistake. Alenko’s file showed he could keep up with Shepard, sure. But Alenko embodied the kind of idealism Shepard would chew up and spit out.

 _If we’re going to put his mind right to get back on the front lines, he needs an anchor,_ Hackett had replied, with that calm, ice cold demeanor that has won him nearly every argument he’s ever been involved in. _Alenko will do the job_.

The old man had been right. Shepard didn’t get close to people, and that was before Torfan. But he’d gotten close to Alenko. Hell, Alenko probably deserves most of the credit for bringing Shepard back from the brink. Because after Torfan, Shepard had indeed been on the brink.

Alenko might be the one on the brink, now. There’s a look in his eye that Anderson recognizes, and it isn’t a good one.

“Sit down.”

Alenko shifts his weight. Not the sitting kind, then. Not today. Anderson’s going to take a wild guess that Alenko hasn’t stopped moving since the _Marrakesh_ picked him up.

He sighs and remains standing, giving the lieutenant silent permission to do the same. “I thought you’d like to know we’re working with the elcor to get a salvage team to Alchera. We’re hoping they find the _Normandy’s_ black box data. Be nice to get some clues on what the hell happened out there.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hm. Brick wall is not Alenko’s usual MO, but that’s sure as hell what he’s talking to right now.

“Joker finished his debrief an hour ago,” Anderson goes on. “I assume you’ve heard his version of what happened.”

More shifting. The uncomfortable kind. Shepard’s done it more than a few times in Anderson’s various offices over the years.

“I haven’t, sir.”

Anderson takes a good, long look at him. He’s spent fifteen years worrying about Shepard. It’s never occurred to him to worry about Alenko.

“I see.” He exhales through his nostrils. “The _Normandy_ was attacked by an unknown vessel. Whoever they were, Joker says they came out of nowhere. Shepard got him into the escape pod, but the ship lost gravity. He…well.”

Alenko stares straight ahead, silent. Anderson looks for a tell, but he only knows Shepard’s.

Alenko isn’t Shepard.

If this conversation is going to be one sided, Anderson needs backup. He moves to his desk, fishes a bottle out of a drawer that’s already half empty after being new just yesterday, and pours two glasses. He pushes one of them across the desk. Doesn’t occur to him until after the fact he has no idea if Alenko drinks scotch. It’s just one of the things Anderson and Shepard always agreed on.

“Have it if you want it,” he says, not up for bullying the lieutenant into a drink. “This is off the record.” He swallows half of his in one go, then heads back for the balcony. A few moments later, Alenko joins him, hands empty, still avoiding his gaze. There’s a chip in the brickwork, though. Not much, but something in his eyes wavers.

Yeah. It might be time to worry about Alenko. Losing two ships in the span of four weeks would do a number on anyone.

Except he doesn’t think it’s about either the _Myeongnyang_ or the _Normandy._

Anderson leans on the railing, gazing out at the wreckage of the Presidium. He takes another sip from his glass. “I’m sorry. I know he meant a lot to you.”

It takes Alenko so long to answer Anderson thinks he isn’t going to. But then some of the starch fades from his shoulders.

“He did.”

Anderson side eyes him. Had it been Shepard standing next to him, he might press. He could get Shepard to open up if he was careful enough. Sometimes.

But this isn’t Anderson’s business. And his own grief certainly isn’t Alenko’s business. But while most of the galaxy is preparing to mourn Commander Shepard, the soldier standing next to him might be the only person he knows who’s grieving for _Sam_. He swirls the remaining liquid in his glass.

“He was the most reckless SOB I’ve ever met,” Anderson says, watching a hanar drift along one of the intact pathways below them. “I’m pretty sure half the shit he pulled over the years was just to piss me off.”

Alenko raises an eyebrow ever so slightly in surprise, but doesn’t turn his head. “He’s always at his best when the plan goes to hell.”

“Since he was a kid,” Anderson agrees, not missing the fact that Alenko had referred to him in the present tense. “First time I ever laid eyes on him he was four. He’d wandered away from Daniel on Arcturus and he called in the cavalry to look for him. You know where I found him?”

Alenko shakes his head.

“In a fountain, playing with a model ship. I asked him what the hell his spaceship was doing in the water. He said, ‘I’m about to find out.’”

Alenko’s mouth curves in a brittle smile. “I didn’t know you knew him that young.”

“I doubt he remembered,” Anderson says. “His father and I were good friends. I dropped in on occasion while he was growing up.” Before Shepard was a soldier. Before he was the Butcher of Torfan or the Savior of the Citadel. Back when he was still Sam, all knees and elbows, so desperate to please he couldn’t sit still.

Anderson still misses that kid.

“He said you kept an eye on him when they shipped him to Ares Station.”

Anderson huffs. “Told you about that, did he.”

Alenko nods, resting his hands on the balcony railing.

Then Shepard had indeed trusted Alenko. Only a handful of people knew about Ares Station and Guthra Tulak. Shepard had been one of five kids sent to biotically train with the krogan, and the only one to realize any potential.

Leave it to the Alliance to come up with a program even riskier than BAaT. Leave it to Hannah Shepard to volunteer her own kid to be part of it. Anderson always wondered if Sam knew about Hannah’s role in Ares, and how hard Daniel fought to keep it from happening.

To Hannah, Sam was a legacy. To the Alliance, he’d been a tool with astronomical potential. Someone had needed to look out for the actual kid. Daniel had tried, but.

Losing Daniel still stings. What would he have thought about his Spectre son?

Hell, Anderson knows exactly what he’d have thought. He would have feared this day, this ending, with every breath he took. He’d wanted _anything_ else for Sam. Anything but this.

And Anderson had helped him become everything Daniel was afraid of. Hell, what choice did he have? You couldn’t dissuade Sam from anything. Once he was target locked on something there was nothing you could do but get as many obstacles out of his way as possible and hope for the best. So that’s what Anderson had done. Mentored him, advocated for him, taken a few hits behind the scenes on his behalf and cleared the path as best he could. Maybe you couldn’t take the target out of Sam’s sights, but you could guide his aim to make sure he hit it dead to rights.

“He’s come a long way since then,” Anderson says, wincing when he realizes now it’s him who can’t let go of the present tense. “I wish I’d been at the inquest. From the secure feed it looked like he put an entire roomful of admirals on their asses. Would love to have seen it in person.”

Alenko stills, expression frozen in place like a mask. Whatever nerve Anderson just touched is a big one, so he steers the conversation in a new direction.

“Though what I really wish I could have seen is what he found to gripe about being stuck in atmosphere. The entire time he was in Rio for ICT, he never once complained about the work. Wouldn’t shut up about how much he hated humidity.”

The fragile smile returns. “He hated going down a well without a hardsuit.”

“Know what almost kept him from qualifying for N1?”

Alenko shakes his head.

“Bugs,” Anderson tells him. “Not twenty-hour days, not hostile terrain, not crawling around in the mud without food or sleep. It was the bugs that damn near washed him out.”

A laugh escapes the lieutenant. It’s a rusty sound. “That…doesn’t surprise me.”

Anderson smiles at the memory. “He got over it. Made it through, like he always did. Wish I’d told him more how…proud I was.”

“You meant a lot to him,” Alenko says, so quietly Anderson almost doesn’t hear him.

The lump that forms in Anderson’s throat takes him off guard. “He had a way of affecting everyone he ever met. I forget sometimes it could go the other way. He made it so easy to think he was fine on his own.”

“He wasn’t.”

Alenko’s stare remains fixed on the view from the balcony. Not many people saw the side of Shepard that needed anyone. Even Anderson only saw it on occasion. Alenko was so far from the kind of person Shepard would let his guard down in front of, but clearly he had.

 _If we’re going to put his mind right to get back on the front lines, he needs an anchor,_ Hackett had said. Alenko had done the job, all right.

Problem was, it looks like that had gone both ways.

Anderson draws in a breath. Might as well get this over with. “I called you here to ask if you would speak at the memorial.”

It’s going to be a spectacle, the likes of which Sam would have hated, but the Alliance sure as hell isn’t going to be denied their PR opportunity.

Alenko shifts his weight. He’s so damn still. Shepard would be pacing the room until Anderson wanted to strangle him.

“Is that an order, sir?”

“A request.”

“Then I respectfully decline.”

Anderson finishes his drink. “Can I ask why?”

Alenko’s grip on the railing tightens. “The Alliance cares about the symbol. I cared about the person. I can’t give them what they want.”

Anderson can’t help but wonder what the lieutenant would have to say. Shepard was so many different things to so many different people. What, exactly, was he to Kaidan Alenko?

 _Why Alenko?_ Anderson had asked Shepard back on Arcturus, the _Normandy’s_ hull gleaming and new out the shutters.

Shepard had thought a long time before answering, like there was too much to say and not enough words to say it.

_Because he grounds me._

The older Shepard had gotten, the rarer it was to get glimpses of Sam. Sometimes Anderson wondered if Sam still existed, or if he’d been swallowed up by the mantle everyone demanded he carry. But that answer had come from Sam.

“Ok,” Anderson tells Alenko. “I’ll hand it off to Hackett.”

“Why not you?” Alenko asks, looking in his direction for the first time.

Anderson gazes down at his empty glass. Twenty years ago he might have thrown it against the wall just to watch it shatter. Nowadays he thinks too hard about the mess it would make, and being the one who has to clean it up. “Because I cared about the person.”

Heavy silence settles between them.

“You should take some leave,” Anderson says. “You’ve more than earned it.”

“I’m fine,” Alenko replies, but that haunted look is back.

 _Soon enough you’re going to have to stop moving, son,_ Anderson thinks. After Torfan, Shepard had hit the same wall Alenko is cruising right towards. But Alenko isn’t Shepard, and he isn’t under his command anymore. All he can do is give him a hand if he asks for it, and from the looks of it he isn’t going to ask.

Not that it would matter. Anderson’s got no anchor to give him that could replace the one he lost.

“Just think about it. And get some sleep.” He gestures towards the door, freeing the lieutenant from further torture. While Alenko makes for the exit, Anderson heads for his desk and the untouched glass. No sense in letting it go to waste.

Alenko pauses at the doorway and looks back over his shoulder. “Rain.”

“I’m sorry?” Anderson asks with a frown.

“You wanted to know what he found to gripe about on Earth. It was the rain.” He looks away without waiting for a response and walks away.

That empty space Anderson thought he’d been imagining when Alenko walked in feels even larger, now. Yeah. Shepard sure knows how to leave a hole in people.

~

_2183 – Serpent Nebula – Widow System – Citadel (+142:09)_

Tali grimaces as she puts weight on her feet for the first time in nearly six days. Garrus hovers, mandibles twitching, just like he has been since she regained consciousness the previous morning. It was touching at first, but once the relief at hearing his voice receded and the hovering continued, it became less touching.

She swats a talon when he attempts to brace her shoulder. “I’m not an invalid.”

“You had a _blood infection,_ ” he retorts. “If my worrying bothers you so much, maybe you should learn how to dodge.”

She grumbles, but there’s no rancor in it. He hasn’t left her side since she opened her eyes, and truth be told, she’s not sure what she would do if he did. The last time she’d seen Liara was yesterday. The asari had departed rather abruptly, murmuring an apology while being so focused on her omnitool she’d nearly run into a nurse on her way out, and did not return. Dr. Chakwas had stayed only long enough to run some final scans and wish Tali well. Kaidan and Joker haven’t been seen or heard from since the _Marrakesh_ docked, and according to Garrus they aren’t responding to messages.

Without Garrus, she’d be alone. She hasn’t been alone since cowering in an alleyway outside of Chora’s Den while gunfire zipped over her head, her father’s parting words ringing in her ears.

 _The aliens will not help you,_ he’d told her before she left on her Pilgrimage. _You cannot trust them. Watch them, learn from them, but keep your eyes open and your wits close. You are my daughter, and I need you to come home._

Indeed, she hadn’t come home. Not for the reason he’d thought, but because when the smoke cleared, Shepard had offered her his hand, helped her up, and proved her father wrong about all of it.

Had Shepard felt alone, in the end?

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Garrus says, an uncertain flange in his subharmonics. “I don’t think anyone expects you to hop off a hospital bed and go straight to a very public memorial service.”

“Maybe not,” she says. “But I’m going.”

“Somehow I knew you were going to say that,” he says with a sigh.

“Have you tried getting a hold of Liara again?” she asks.

Garrus tugs at the collar of his suit. He looks good in dress attire, though he’s about as comfortable in it as Joker is in dress blues. “Yeah. She wanted to meet at a café on the Presidium before we head up.” A mandible flicks, plates shifting like they do when he’s deep in thought. “I don’t know, something sounded off.”

Tali thinks about the explosion in the _Normandy’s_ engine room, Caroline Grenado’s wordless pleas for help, Liara holstering her pistol with blood all over her chestplate, and shudders.

Garrus scrutinizes her carefully. “I still think you’re asking too much of yourself.”

“He was our friend, Garrus. And Kaidan shouldn’t go through it alone.”

“Alenko?” Garrus asks with a snort. “You’d think if he didn’t want to be alone he’d answer my calls.”

“Doesn’t matter if he wants to be alone,” Tali says under her breath. “He’s not going to be.”

One day she’ll tell him about the inquest, the rain, and everything that transpired on Earth a few weeks ago. But not today.

Besides, this may be her last chance to see Kaidan. Joker. Any of them. Now that she’s being discharged from Huerta, she has nowhere to go. Dr. Nezzha, the quarian physician who had aided Dr. Chakwas, leaves in a few hours on the _Ellassar,_ and Tali is expected to be with her.

It’s time to finish her Pilgrimage.

She offers an arm to Garrus. She’s more unsteady on her feet than she wants to admit, but Garrus, to his credit, says nothing about how much she leans on him on the way to the Presidium. The fever had taken more out of her than she realized.

They make their way to the café where Liara had asked them to meet. Here, in this spared corner of the ring, the Citadel’s surviving high society mills, chats, dines, and shops as though Saren had never come through the conduit.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Garrus asks. “Some places it’s a warzone, others it’s like nothing happened at all.”

Tali nods. Shepard had given them this – the chance to keep living their lives, uninterrupted and unencumbered by the cost.

Liara waits for them at a table, shoulders hunched, twining and untwining her fingers. The plain jumpsuit she wears doesn’t suggest someone going to a memorial that starts in less than an hour. When Liara spots them approaching, she gets to her feet, careful not to look them in the eye. Unease coils in Tali’s gut. Garrus is right. Something is off.

“Thank you for coming.” Liara smiles weakly. “Tali, it is very good to see you up and about.”

Tali sits gingerly in the chair across from Liara, while Garrus takes the one next to Tali. The three of them together almost make it possible to believe she’s no different from the other patrons going about their normal lives. This is just another day with her crewmates. Any moment Shepard is going to return from the Tower, reeling off a litany of expletives directed at the Council while Kaidan listens and nods patiently without interrupting. Behind them, Wrex will mutter something under his breath and Ashley Williams will laugh so hard she has to wipe tears from her eyes.

But Tali isn’t one of those patrons. Wrex isn’t here, Ashley and Shepard are dead and Kaidan won’t return anyone’s calls.

“Of course we came,” Tali says, voice catching. “We should go up there together.” _We’re all that’s left._

Liara takes her seat once more, shifting in it like she’d rather be anywhere else. “I know. But I am afraid I will not be attending the memorial.”

Tali’s stirs in surprise. “But…why _not_?”

“I leave the Citadel in less than an hour.”

Tali glances sharply at Garrus, whose mandibles flutter in confusion.

“Where are you going?” Garrus asks.

She lowers her eyes. “I received a message yesterday. I…I need information. My contacts on Ilium may be able to help.”

Tali tilts her head. “Information? On _what?_ ” _We need you here._ And since when did Liara have _contacts?_

Liara rests her hands on the table, fingers clenching. She avoids Tali’s gaze entirely, fixing her attention on Garrus, expression shrewd. Too shrewd. Too much like Benezia. “Do you know anything about Cerberus? The human organization…the ones who killed the Alliance admiral.”

Garrus’ mandibles shiver. Tali sits straighter in her chair. Kahoku’s death isn’t exactly something you forget.

“Yes...I remember,” Garrus says. “But I don’t know any more about them than you do. What does Cerberus have to do with anything?”

“They might…” she trails off, face contorting in a frustrated grimace. She goes back to twisting her fingers, gaze trained on the table. “On Earth, Shepard laid out the worst-case scenario for a reaper invasion. It was…terrifying.”

“I know,” Tali says testily. “I was there.”

She closes her eyes, as though summoning courage. “We bought our cycle time by destroying Sovereign. But the Alliance is going to cover it up. I believe the other council races will as well. We’re _wasting_ the time he bought all of us. We have to _do_ something. And it appears I am not the only one who feels this way.”

Tali clenches her fists. “ _Wasting_ time? Mourning Shepard is _wasting_ time? Keelah, Liara have you _listened_ to yourself at all for the past few weeks? Will you stop worrying about the galaxy for once and worry about the people sitting in front of you? We all _lost_ something out there over Alchera. The galaxy can wait a few days.”

Liara’s expression hardens. “You have no idea what we have _lost_. I do.”

Tali leans forward to argue, but Garrus stops her with a raised talon. Tali crosses her arms over her chest and bites her tongue.

“Liara, I don’t understand,” he says gently.

“I am going after him,” she says, once more avoiding Tali’s gaze.

“Going after…” Garrus blinks. “ _Shepard?_ ”

She nods.

“ _Why?”_ Tali demands. More importantly, why _now?_

“We need him,” Liara insists.

“Your friends need _you_ ,” Tali retorts. “Not a corpse.”

She winces. “You do not understand. I am…not sure I understand myself yet. But I have been contacted by…never mind. It is not important. What is important is there might be a _chance_.”

“A chance for _what?_ ” Tali exclaims. A few patrons glance in their direction. “Shepard’s dead. You can’t bring him back. You know that, right? Tell me you know that.”

She shakes her head. “I do not know anything. I need answers. Information. There is too much at stake to let him go without a fight.”

“Just like you fought to save Grenado? It was awfully easy for you to put a bullet in _her_ and walk away.”

Liara’s eyes widen. She opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. Garrus looks back and forth between them in dismay and confusion, but Tali isn’t feeling generous enough to bring him up to speed.

“Shepard’s dead,” Tali repeats. “You can’t help him. You _can_ help us. Help Kaidan. He _needs_ us, and you know it. We’re his _friends._ _You_ are our friend.”

“Tali,” Liara pleads.

This time Garrus beats her to a reply. “Liara, I am _begging_ you to wait.” He lays a talon on her arm.

“Let’s talk after the memorial. Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll help however I can.”

She pulls her arm away. “I am…sorry. To both of you. But I have to do this. Please. Tell Kaidan…tell him I am sorry.”

She gets up from her chair.

“Liara, _no,_ ” Tali begs.

Liara shakes her head and turns her back, straightens her shoulders and walks away. Tali struggles to her feet, but Garrus stops her.

“Let her go,” he says, a low thrum in his subvocals probably meant to be soothing. It isn’t soothing.

Ashley. Wrex. Liara. _Shepard_. Even Garrus had left. In just a few more hours, Tali’s leaving, too.

What if she never sees any of them again?

“It’s all falling apart,” Tali murmurs. “Isn’t it?”

“I’ll find her,” Garrus assures her. “I’ll do some digging and figure out what she’s up to. I’m a cop. That’s what I do.”

Tali nods, still watching Liara’s retreating back.

“Tali.”

She turns to look at him. His mandibles pull tight to his faceplates.

“It’s going to be all right,” he says.

But it isn’t, is it? Not without Shepard. He was their captain. She, more than any of them, knows what a captain truly means to their ship. Their crew. When you replace the ship, the crew is never the same. Replace the captain, it’s not the same ship. And they’ve lost both.

Garrus’ arm is ready and waiting for her to lean on. It’s a long walk from here to the lift that will take them to the Tower. For a little while longer, at least, she’s not alone.

Aliens don’t carry their ship names with them the way quarians do. Perhaps when you’re born with dirt under your feet you don’t need to. For them, home isn’t a vessel among the stars – it’s a fixed place in the universe, a way back no matter how far from it you venture.

But Shepard had been different. Like the quarians, he had no fixed point. Home was what – or who – he carried with him. He’d understood the power of a ship name, even if he hadn’t used one out loud. People who served with Shepard felt like they _belonged,_ in ways they couldn’t anywhere else, because he said to hell with that fixed point in the galaxy and brought home to anyone who needed it. For Shepard, there wasn’t a way back. Just a way forward.

Shepard _changed_ people.

They’ve lost so much more than a ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm working hard to get updates out every two weeks, but this one is really rough to write, so apologies if the schedule slips. Thanks for coming along for the ride!!


	5. Things You Can't Speak About

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan looks for his bearings.

_Only twenty minutes to sleep_   
_But you dream of some epiphany_   
_Just one single glimpse of relief_   
_To make some sense of what you've seen_

[x](https://open.spotify.com/track/08fa9LFcFBTcilB3iq2e2A?si=O9xTKmeNQym6kBogV4yJEg)

**Things You Can’t Speak About**

Kaidan stares up at the ceiling of docking bay F-12 from a cot shoved into the corner by a few shipping containers. The clank and grind of dockworkers unloading cargo mingles with the hiss of coolant, the rattle of boots on the deckplates, and the soft murmur of remaining _Normandy_ crew until it all fades into white noise. Between the damage to the Citadel and flood of displaced refugees from Sovereign’s attack, the docking bay was the only lodging option C-Sec could scrounge up.

His chronometer reads 02:42, but it might as well be 14:42. Time doesn’t mean much here. Too much life, too much living.

The Citadel doesn’t sleep, and neither does Kaidan.

BAaT had taught him how much you could do, how far you could go, without sleep. The human body is surprisingly resilient that way. You need it to keep functioning, so it does. Survival, maybe. Damage control. Just enough adrenaline to keep your eyes open to ensure you’re ready to run. Fight. Survive. _Breathe._

He can’t breathe.

He’s dozed off since he stopped taking the stims. Once leaning against the wall of the docking bay, once sitting at a table signing off on _Normandy_ manifests, equipment and crew, so the Alliance could start tabulating their losses. Other than that he’s caught an hour or two here and there, enough to keep him on his feet. But he hasn’t slept. Not really. Every time he lays down he just stares at the ceiling, eyes wide open.

If he closes his eyes he can hear the rustle of the sheets from the last morning he’d woken up, touch the warm body nestled against him, feel the brush of Shepard’s lips against his neck, see the drowsy smile on his face, hear Shepard’s voice in his ear whispering _I don’t want you to go._

As long as he doesn’t sleep, that memory will remain the last time he woke up, like it was still this morning and not five days ago.

Kaidan swallows and lays a hand on his chest, like he can somehow reach in and remove the vise clamped around it. If he could just take one deep breath, maybe all of this would stop.

He closes his eyes and draws air in through his nose, pulling what he can into his lungs. But it hurts. Every time, every inhale.

_(Kaidan. Did you know it would feel like this?)_

_(No.)_

He lets the breath out and opens his eyes. The ceiling remains the plain, high arch of the docking bay and not Shepard’s cabin. The dockworkers still clank and grind. The deckplates still rattle. The survivors still murmur. The space next to him stays empty.

He activates his omnitool. Anger stirs in his chest at just how quickly the deluge of messages he’s received since arriving on the Citadel have buried the two he’s looking for. Like they’re already part of his past, and not frozen in his present.

If only everything would just _stop_ for one fucking minute, maybe he could catch his breath.

He finds the first message, from Dr. Chakwas in pod four. He reads it again, for maybe the hundredth, maybe the thousandth time, as if maybe this time the words will be different.

_[POD 4 incoming message]_

_[frequency update]_

_[message reroute]_

_[message start]_

[Bridge pod last to eject. Shepard was on comms with Joker, but I can’t raise the pod.]

_[message end]_

Kaidan stares back at the ceiling. If only he hadn’t asked Adams to establish a connection to the pod. If only he hadn’t requested updates to the crew manifest.

For the hundredth, maybe the thousandth time, he tells himself not to look at the second message, the one with Joker’s encoded signature. He does it anyway, for the hundredth, maybe the thousandth time.

_[POD 1 incoming message]_

_[frequency update]_

_[message reroute]_

_[message starts]_

[It’s just me.]

_[message ends]_

Three words. Just three words had cost him everything.

What if Shepard hadn’t given Kaidan those last two steps, that last empty touch? What if Kaidan hadn’t spoken up, and just let Shepard keep going towards the helm? Would that have made the difference? Would that have given him the half a second he needed to follow Joker into the pod?

Shepard had defied death so many times. The Citadel. Eden Prime. Torfan. Sharjila. Why should this have been any different? He was an N7 for godsakes. Kaidan had witnessed him bend the universe to his own will so many times. Hell, he’d _made_ it to Joker. He’d _put_ the helmsman in the pod. Why, why, _why_ was that last step to join him the one distance he couldn’t cross?

He puts a hand over his eyes. It hurts to swallow through that vise, but he does it, fingers of his other hand curling into a fist.

All Shepard had to do was get in the pod. All Kaidan had to do was not leave him behind. Kaidan has _never_ left him behind.

The rattle of boots on the deckplates gets closer. Kaidan pulls in another shallow breath and pushes himself into a seated position. It’ll be for him. It’s always someone looking for him. He’s already spoken with Udina to inform him humanity had lost their Spectre, done a preliminary debrief with Admiral Nguyen, met with an Alliance PR rep to coach him on how to handle the press.

He can just picture the roll of Shepard’s eyes over the last one.

It’s okay. It’s fine. As long as someone needs him to do something he doesn’t have time to sleep, and the last time he woke up can still be in Shepard’s arms.

The boots belong to Dr. Chakwas, who he hasn’t seen since leaving the _Marrakesh._ She comes to a stop in front of his cot, lips pressed together in something that looks like a smile, but isn’t.

“I came to check on you,” she says. The arch in her eyebrow is the same as it had been when they’d had tea in the _Normandy’s_ med bay that last day.

_You’ve been sleeping better_ , she’d said. _I have my suspicions as to the remedy._

Yes, he had been sleeping better. With Shepard’s arms waiting for him, Shepard’s skin pressed against his with a drowsy _I love you_ whispered in his ear, Kaidan couldn’t wait to go to sleep. Couldn’t wait to wake up so he could do it again.

_(Did you know it would feel like this?)_

_(No.)_

“I’m fine,” he says.

She crosses her arms. “You said you’d sleep when I sleep.”

He gestures. “You’re as awake as I am.”

“Yes, but I _have_ slept. Can you say the same?” She holds up a finger before he can reply. “Think very carefully before lying to me, Lieutenant. I have the power to relieve you of duty and I suggest you don’t test me.”

It wouldn’t matter if she did. Not really. His role as the _Normandy’s_ temporary CO has more or less ended. Half the crew is already shipping out, most headed to Arcturus for debriefings, psych evals and reassignment. He’ll be one of them, eventually. He’s almost surprised they’re keeping him here through the memorial. As the highest-ranking survivor from the ship, he’s the person they’ll want their hands on most after Joker. Anderson probably has something to do with his delayed departure. He’s not sure whether to thank him or deck him.

He looks up at Chakwas’ perfectly arched eyebrow. She’s as put together as always, spotless uniform, not a single hair out of place, posture something out of a textbook. But she looks old. He’s never thought of her as old.

Easy to forget he’s not the only one going through hell.

He sighs, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m…trying.”

Without asking for an invitation she sits down beside him on the cot and offers a wan smile. The silence is awkward, uncomfortable, neither of them knowing what to say when they’re both the type who should have something in moments like this. But he won’t deny her mere presence is…comforting, in some small way.

“I thought you would like to know that Tali’s going to make a full recovery,” she says. “I just spoke to Dr. Nezzha. The fever broke and she’s out of quarantine.”

Kaidan lets go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and for a moment the vise loosens. “That’s…great news.”

Chakwas nods. “Garrus is with her. He asked about you. Despite how…ramshackle this setup looks, security is quite tight in this docking bay. They haven’t let him in.”

No wonder Kaidan has seen so many Alliance uniforms and so few C-Sec. Losing a prototype stealth frigate in the Traverse is probably a security nightmare, now that he thinks about it. One he’ll have to deal with in some capacity, like it or not.

Just add it to the list.

Kaidan rubs his forehead. “Garrus keeps messaging me. I should try and get a hold of him. And Adams…I keep meaning to get a copy of the pod logs so I can review them again. Get things straight in my head before they interrogate me.”

“He’s gone,” she says. “They shipped him out a few hours ago.”

Shit. That’s right. He knew that, somewhere. He’d signed the paperwork, after all. Some commanding officer he’s turning out to be.

Kaidan stares across the docking bay. Out the window, the hull of a cruiser gleams under its docking clamps. He can’t make out which one it is from here. Not the _Marrakesh._ She’d been back underway as soon as they’d offloaded the _Normandy_ survivors.

“I never thanked him,” Kaidan says. “He saved our lives getting the pod clear, and I never thanked him for it.”

“You saved his life, too,” she reminds him. “He knows, Kaidan. All of us know what we did for each other.”

“Yeah,” he says, raking a hand through his hair. “I guess you’re right.”

She puts a hand on his arm. “You need to sleep. And eat. You don’t need me to tell you biotics can’t skip meals. Passing out in the middle of Shepard’s memorial is not something to add to your list of troubles.”

“I know how to take care of myself.”

“These are extenuating circumstances.” Her fingers tighten around his arm. “Kaidan, we’ve all experienced a profound loss. But I won’t pretend to believe what you’re going through isn’t…different from what the rest of us are feeling. Stop worrying about everyone else. Look after yourself. Take some time. Take some leave if you need to. The galaxy will still be here when you come back, in no small part because you helped save it.”

“Anderson said something similar,” he says with a dry chuckle. “I must look bad.”

“It’s what I don’t see that worries me.”

He heaves a sigh. “Okay. You win. If you have something to help me fall asleep I’ll take it.”

She digs in a pocket and draws out a small pill bottle. “My last act as your primary physician. I leave for Arcturus in an hour.”

He takes the bottle from her. It feels very…final. He turns it over in his hand before looking up at her. “We were lucky to have you, Karin. Wherever we land…I’m going to miss you.”

She gives his arm one last squeeze before standing up. “You never know, Lieutenant. Life has a funny way of throwing people back together. Perhaps our paths will cross again.”

Her shoulders are straight, gait purposeful as she walks away. He hopes there’s someone looking after her the way she’s looked after the rest of them.

When she’s out of sight he looks back down at the bottle in his hand. The last time he’d slept, he’d woken to Shepard’s soft gaze and the gentle caress of a thumb against his cheek.

Kaidan touches his lips with his fingers, the ghost of Shepard’s mouth on his so close and so very far away. It still feels like this morning. Would be, so long as he doesn’t fall asleep.

_(Sam.)_

_(I’ll be fine.)_

He opens the bottle, and takes the pill.

~

_Shepard sits nestled beside him on the porch swing at the orchard, arm looped through his, head on Kaidan’s shoulder. He wears civilian clothes, jeans and a t-shirt bearing the Alliance logo, along with Kaidan’s jacket, the one he borrowed in Vancouver and never gave back. Through the dark, the first hint of dawn hovers on the horizon, silhouetting the rounded tops of the Cortland trees._

_“You know I think every sunrise I’ve ever watched has been with you,” Shepard says._

_Kaidan shifts on the swing, tugging Shepard just a little closer. The breeze is crisp and Shepard is warm, so warm, an ember resting against him._

_“Not even in Rio?”_

_“Face was in the mud most of the time I was in Rio. Rio sucked, quite frankly.”_

_Kaidan smiles, uses his free hand to stroke Shepard’s cheek. “Anderson says the bugs nearly washed you out.”_

_“Fuck mosquitos. I’d much rather take a bullet than be that fucking itchy all the time.” Shepard drapes his arm across Kaidan, hand working its way under the hem of his shirt. “This is…much better than Rio.”_

_Kaidan revels in the weight of Shepard’s hand, the way his fingers constantly roam, loathe to remain completely still. Shepard is never still, not really, not even when he sleeps. Kaidan has to completely remake the bed every time they wake up, fitted sheet and all._

_It’s perfect._

_“Remember the last time we sat out here and watched the sun come up?” Kaidan asks, thinking of that first visit to his parents, before the_ Normandy, _before Saren, when Shepard was still a Lieutenant Commander, Kaidan a First Lieutenant and neither of them had any idea what lay ahead of them or what being in each other’s arms felt like._

_“When you fell asleep and drooled on my shoulder?”_

_“You’re a liar and you know it. I didn’t fall asleep. I dozed off.”_

_“You keep telling yourself that.”_

_Kaidan chuckles and presses a kiss to his forehead. There are so many stars out tonight. Too many. They should be fading by now as more light streaks the sky. But instead they glimmer like studded gems. It’s fine. If dawn is a little slower to come, it just means more time like this. He’s waited years for this._

_“Sam.”_

_“Hm.”_

_“Do you think maybe my parents didn’t misunderstand anything on that trip, and just saw what we didn’t?”_

_Shepard’s fingers draw patterns on Kaidan’s chest while his gaze strays to the glittering stars. “Yeah. I do. Looking back on it, I should never have let go of you after that first sunrise. I’m sorry.”_

_“For what?”_

_“I loved you. I loved you right then. I just didn’t…understand that’s what it was. We lost so much time because of me.”_

_“We have time now. We have all the time we want.”_

_Shepard’s fingers still, truly still, sending a chill down Kaidan’s spine. “Except you have to wake up.”_

_Kaidan frowns and tightens his grip. “I am awake. Not going to fall asleep on you this time.”_

_Shepard withdraws his hand from Kaidan’s shirt and cups his cheek, eyes filled with regret. “Kaidan. You have to wake up.”_

_~_

Kaidan’s eyes snap open. Out in the docking bay, a crate slides off a pallet with a clank, followed by angry shouting. He rolls over onto his shoulder, blinking into the empty space beside him. The blanket is still in the exact position it had been when he fell asleep.

He checks the chronometer on his omnitool. Nearly 07:30, and the message indicator is flashing. He sits up, swings his legs to the floor. The message from pod one displays when he opens his omnitool. He swipes it quickly away and scrolls up to the newest batch. The unreads are starting to pile up. His parents. Garrus. Kara Pendergrass. Emily Wong. Half a dozen other reporters. He archives them. Later. He’ll deal with them later. But there’s another one from Anderson. That one he should probably take. The memorial is in a little over six hours and he still doesn’t know where it’s supposed to be held or what exactly anyone expects from him.

The same people who tried to crucify Shepard during the inquest now want to herald him as a hero. Shepard, who had tried so hard, so _fucking_ hard to save them all, and in return they’d left him somewhere over Alchera.

The vise around his chest squeezes a little tighter.

Not even three weeks ago the two of them had sat in an Alliance bar in Vancouver, trying to wrap their heads around the inquest about to take place over the Battle of the Citadel, matching each other shot for shot right before making the insane decision to masquerade as a couple in front of Kaidan’s parents, all because Shepard had been so _tired_ of fighting wars without allies that pretending to be in a relationship had sounded like a better idea than going back to his quarters alone.

He’d fought alone. He’d _died_ alone. They’d _left him_. And now they’re going to smile as they bury him in front of the entire galaxy.

Kaidan puts his head in his hands, swears, then gets to his feet. His uniform is wrinkled from being slept in and he needs a shower, but he doesn’t have a change of clothes and he can’t remember where he’d showered after getting to the Citadel, how to find it, or how long ago that actually was.

To hell with it. If Anderson wants to see him again, what he sees is what he’s going to get. Kaidan nods at the guard as he goes through the security checkpoint, gets an elevator to the Presidium and leans his head against the wall as it whirs, trying to block out the memory of Shepard’s irritated pacing while he waits for it to ascend. Shepard always complained the elevators on the Citadel were too slow. Most things were too slow for Shepard.

_So impulsive. So perfect_ , Kaidan had told him on their first night together.

_Impulsive hardly seems like it would fit your definition of perfect,_ he’d scoffed.

_Can’t help it. You’re just like that. You somehow make it perfect, even if I want to smack you in the head sometimes_.

Idly Kaidan wonders if they’ve repaired the elevator line to the Tower, or if the glass is still shattered from where Shepard shot it out and ordered them into the depressurized shaft. Another thing he shouldn’t have been able to pull off, but had. Shepard made the impossible ordinary, and yet that one, final step into the pod had been too much to ask.

When he reaches Anderson’s office his old captain opens the door, eyebrow quirking in surprise. “Lieutenant? What can I do for you?”

Kaidan frowns. “You wanted to see me.”

“Yes…we spoke the other day.”

Kaidan blinks, then opens his omnitool. “But your message—” He stops. He’d never actually opened the message. Fuck.

Anderson watches as he skims it, concern etched into his features. Turns out it isn’t a summons. Just an all hands message to all the survivors of the _Normandy_. Words of encouragement. Commendation for remaining calm in a crisis and remembering their training.

Kaidan swallows. “Sorry, sir. I—misunderstood. Didn’t mean to bother you.” He turns to go, but Anderson clears his throat.

“Come inside.”

Kaidan sighs and rubs the back of his neck as he follows Anderson into his office. Boy, he’s fucked it up now. Coming unraveled in front of your old boss is going to look great in a report somewhere.

“Are you up for the memorial?” Anderson asks when the door closes.

No bullshit with Anderson. Kaidan’s always liked that about him.

“I’m fine, sir.”

“No one is ordering you to be there. And if anyone has a problem with you sitting it out I’ll take the heat.”

Kaidan shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I owe it to him.” The words sound hollow even to him. Shepard would have been the first in line to skip this kind of military bravado bullshit. It’s just another way for the Alliance to use him.

Maybe that’s why he has to go. To have someone in that room who sees through it and knows the truth. Someone who knows what it cost Shepard to be their hero, who’d seen him sitting on a bathroom floor after his testimony, staring at a wall asking if it would always be like this, if he’d always have to fight battles like this alone.

He’d died _alone._

Anderson takes a deep breath, scrutinizing Kaidan with a careful gaze. Kaidan can take it. He could take Shepard’s directed energy stare without wilting.

“You need to clean up, then,” he says. “Find your dress blues.”

“At least I know they still fit,” Kaidan replies, but once the words are out of his mouth he stops. A bitter laugh escapes him.

“What is it?” Anderson demands.

“I don’t have dress blues anymore,” Kaidan says. “They went down with the ship.”

Even the fatigues he’s got on now were borrowed from someone on the _Marrakesh._ He’d had the same problem Ashley Williams had after Eden Prime. She’d come onto the _Normandy_ with nothing but her armor, and Anderson hadn’t been able to find a pair of reg boots that fit her. She’d clonked all over the ship in her Phoenix hardsuit boots until they got to the Citadel, where she’d dragged Kaidan to some fancy boutique and bought the only pair in her size she could afford – neon green with matching laces.

He’d actually looked for neon green when he picked up a replacement for the pair that went down on the _Normandy._ They didn’t have it. He’d smiled at the clerk and left without buying anything. A few minutes later he was leaning against a wall in a side alley struggling to catch his breath, just like the night of the gala.

That night, Shepard had talked him through it, one arm around him, the other trapping Kaidan’s hand to his heart, the rise and fall of his chest sure and steady under Kaidan’s palm. _Feel that?_ he’d asked. _We’ll do it together. When I breathe, you breathe_.

Had Shepard been able to breathe, at the end? Had he panicked, with no one there to tell him it would be all right?

Kaidan stayed in that alley, alone this time, riding out his adrenaline, forcing air into his lungs without Shepard’s voice in his ear, because this wasn’t the gala. Shepard is dead, Ashley is dead, and no one gives a shit about Kaidan’s boots.

Anderson’s gaze softens a little. “Okay. I’m sending you the keycode for my personal quarters. Go get cleaned up. Shave, for godsakes. I’ll find you a dress uniform.”

“Sir, that’s not necessary. I—”

The captain puts a hand on Alenko’s shoulder. Just like Dr. Chakwas, he looks old. “Take the damn gesture of kindness and get out of my office, Lieutenant. Sam was the son I never had. Let me do something for someone he cared about.”

Kaidan nods, the vise in his chest twisting tighter. “Yes, sir.”

For a moment he hesitates. Wants to shout at someone who might actually understand, _how do I do this? How do I go on without him? What do I do now?_

But instead, he squares his shoulders, forces some air through the vise around his chest, and goes to get cleaned up.

~

They did fix the elevator to the Tower.

Riding in it again is…surreal. Outside the glass, instead of the closed cylinder of the Citadel, the blue-lit haze of the Serpent Nebula floats hazily past. Instead of combat armor he’s got on borrowed dress blues. No gun in his hands, no one shooting at him. No Shepard asking if their helmet seals are secure before putting three bullets into the glass and declaring it was time to go for a walk.

This is more like the first time he’d ridden to the Tower. When they thought the only threat was Saren and the geth, and it was Shepard and Williams standing beside him, not Captain Anderson.

Shepard. Williams. Jenkins. Nihlus. Of everyone who went to Eden Prime, Kaidan is the only one left.

He looks away from the view and tugs at the hem of his borrowed uniform. Supposedly his size, but it’s loose in the chest and he’d had to find a belt to ensure the pants stayed up. Maybe Dr. Chakwas is right – he should probably eat more than he has been. It’s usually Shepard’s eating habits he has to keep an eye on. Not his own.

It’ll work. It’s fine.

He wasn’t supposed to need a dress uniform again so soon after the inquest, when he hadn’t been able to stop staring at Shepard in his. The same man who managed to pull the fitted sheet off the mattress and lose a pillow in his sleep wore that uniform like he was born in it, not so much as a wrinkle to be found. Seeing the wreckage of those sheets juxtaposed with that pristine uniform had been just one more reason to love him. _How is_ this _and_ that _the same person?_ Kaidan had demanded. He’d just grinned.

_Buried in that baseless accusation, did I hear you tell me I look good in a dress uniform?_

God, he did look good in it.

Anderson stands perfectly still as the elevator ascends, chin up, expression stoic, hands clasped behind his back. Polar opposite of Shepard’s constant kinetic energy. Two N7s, two completely different personalities. Did Anderson smirk on the battlefield the way Shepard always did, or was his way of fighting just as methodical as his body language?

Anderson hasn’t said a word since boarding the elevator car. Maybe he’s seeing a few ghosts, too.

What must it have been like to mentor someone like Shepard? To be his CO and surrogate father all at once? Had his heart hit his feet just like Kaidan’s when that chunk of Sovereign’s corpse had pirouetted through the window of the Tower? Had he checked the Torfan casualty list with a lump in his throat, praying Shepard’s name wasn’t on it? Does Anderson also have a message on his omnitool, slowly getting shuffled to the bottom, that he wishes every second of the day had said something else, anything else?

How does he hide it all so much better than Kaidan does?

Kaidan wets his lips, the silence in the elevator threatening to swallow him whole. “I’m surprised they got the Council chamber put back together this quickly,” he says.

“It’s far from put back together,” Anderson replies, tone clipped. “Part of why they chose it. They want to put the Hero of the Citadel’s face on a few construction cranes and show the galaxy we’re rebuilding.”

_That name’ll never stick_ , Shepard had said. All he ever saw in the mirror was the Butcher of Torfan. All the galaxy wanted was the hero. Kaidan just wants Sam.

_Thought you hated it when people called you by your name,_ Kaidan had said.

_Not you,_ he’d whispered in Kaidan’s ear.

The elevator finally comes to a halt at its destination. There will be no Sam in the room he’s about to walk into. They left him at Alchera. He squares his shoulders as the doors open.

He blinks, pulse speeding up as voices wash over him. The Tower anteroom is filled with people, many of them humans wearing Alliance uniforms, but plenty of aliens, too. He’d underestimated how well-represented the Turian Hierarchy, Salarian Union and Asari Republic would be, though he shouldn’t have. Shepard had saved them all.

Scorch marks still mar the walls. The uprooted trees have not been replaced. The outline of the grenade detonation Kaidan had shielded Tali from remains etched on that first set of stairs. The glass where Sovereign’s debris had come through the window has only partially been replaced. Kinetic barriers keep the vacuum at bay in place of those that haven’t.

A massive, holo-projected image of Shepard reflects off the new glass. He wears his N7 armor, chin low, in mid-stride with his shotgun in one hand, helmet in the other. Kaidan can’t for the life of him think of where the image came from, but the sight of it stops him right in his tracks. The smirk he’d come to know so well plays across Shepard’s lips. Ready for a fight. Ready for anything.

Except that last step.

Kaidan swallows, hand fumbling for something to hold onto, but all he finds is empty space. He flexes his fingers instead and returns them to his side.

_Right here_ , Shepard whispers in his ear. _Look at me, Lieutenant. Breathe. I’ve got you_.

_No, you don’t,_ Kaidan thinks. _Not anymore._

A woman clears her throat only a few steps from the elevator. “Captain Anderson. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Kaidan glances towards the speaker, paling when he looks right into Shepard’s eyes. Sharp, salient, like getting caught in the crosshairs of a directed energy weapon. But these eyes are grey, and they’re framed by brunette hairs streaked with silver.

Hannah Shepard is the spitting image of her son. Eyes. Cheekbones. The shape of her jaw, the set of her shoulders, _all_ of it is Sam.

Kaidan’s heart hammers, feet frozen right to the floor as her gaze passes over him. Just like her son, Hannah Shepard can look right into your heart or right through you as if you don’t exist. And right then, Kaidan very much doesn’t exist. As quickly as Captain Shepard locks onto him she moves on, redirecting her gaze to Anderson.

“Captain,” Anderson says, unfazed. “I wasn’t sure if the _Kilimanjaro_ would arrive in time.”

Her smile is thin. Stiff. So unlike Sam’s. Sam’s smile had a spark. “He was my son, David. If the ship hadn’t arrived on time they would have god damned waited.”

Anderson’s lips twist. Behind his back, his fingers knead. “Like all those time he waited for you?” he asks, voice barely more than a rumble. Kaidan darts a surprised glance his way. A storm gathers on his former captain’s face. Perhaps he isn’t hiding things as well as Kaidan first thought.

Captain Shepard lowers her chin. God, they look so much alike. Fearless. Both of them. “Tread carefully, Captain.”

Anderson relents. “Perhaps now isn’t the time to open old wounds.”

“No,” she replies.

Kaidan’s fingers curl against his thigh. He had seen Hannah Shepard once before, on Arcturus during the promotion ceremony that made Shepard a full Commander and Kaidan a Staff Lieutenant, right before he’d moved his footlocker from the _Myeongnyang_ to the _Normandy._ They hadn’t spoken, and Shepard hadn’t introduced them. Right after the ceremony he’d left with her for dinner, returning to the _Normandy’s_ airlock less than an hour later with an expression that clearly said he didn’t want to talk about it. The topic of Hannah Shepard has always been a landmine, one they only ever navigated late at night, when their defenses were down and the need to not feel so damn alone in it all got the better of them.

_She’s not my mother,_ he’d said on one of those nights _. She’s a superior officer. Always has been._ In Vancouver just a few weeks ago he’d tried to leave the room when Kaidan’s mother treated him a little too much like family. _Forgot what it was like_ , he’d confided later.

_Old wounds_. The wound hadn’t been old, not for Sam. Kaidan’s throat tightens.

Anderson gestures. “Have you met Lieutenant Alenko?”

Her gaze falls upon him once more, opaque, inscrutable, so eerily like the first day he’d met Shepard five years ago on Arcturus, when the newly-minted Lieutenant Commander had given him a silent tactical assessment over a plate of pancakes.

Kaidan had passed that test. He doesn’t give a shit if he passes this one.

“I haven’t. But he spoke of you. From the _Myeongnyang,_ yes?”

That takes him off guard. Shepard didn’t talk to his mother about anything. “Yes,” he says, hating how hoarse his voice sounds. “I served with him on the ‘ _Yang_ and the _Normandy._ ”

Even her nod has sharp edges. “Your service record is impressive. You worked well together.”

They worked well together. He stifles a bitter laugh. Kaidan had been there for Shepard when he almost hadn’t made it onto the _‘Yang_ in the first place. He’d gotten him back on his feet after N5 nearly wrecked him. He’d kept Shepard alive while hauling him through the silicate-laced gales on Sharjila for three days before getting rescued. He’d been the one here, right _here_ in this chamber, who’d found him in the rubble and stayed by his side until help came.

They worked _well_ together. Fuck that. Kaidan had _loved_ him. With every fiber of his being he’d loved him.

“Yes,” Kaidan says, forcing the words around the sandpaper in his throat. “We did.”

Her gaze lingers on him. Kaidan holds it, eyes burning.

“They’ve reserved seating for us,” she says eventually. “Come with me.”

Kaidan follows behind them both, eyeing the larger than life image projected onto the glass. He can picture Shepard’s look of disdain. _They pick the worst fucking file photos of me_.

Not this time. That photo is the Hero of the Citadel, not the Butcher of Torfan. It’s the soldier who’s pulled Kaidan out of the fire more times than he can count, who would put everyone but himself first. But it’s only another piece. Not the whole. Never the whole. That file photo doesn’t capture what his smirk looks like when it melts into a smile, a real one that he’d never give a camera. It doesn’t show how clear his eyes get when it’s just the two of them, or how smooth the lines of his brow become when he falls asleep in Kaidan’s arms.

No one here knows what the galaxy’s truly lost.

“Alenko.”

Kaidan inhales sharply when Anderson calls his name. He and Captain Shepard wait a few meters ahead of him. He hadn’t even noticed he’d stopped moving. “Yes, sir,” he mutters and resumes walking.

A handful of reporters and Alliance officers try to flag down Captain Shepard the closer they get to the rebuilt Council dais, but she’s got the same lethal gaze as her son, and they step aside and let her pass. Kaidan keeps his head down to ward off any unwanted attention.

Seating has been set up all around all levels of the chamber, where a few months ago a crowd had gathered to watch Shepard’s induction ceremony to the Spectres. Captain Shepard leads them to a section on the main level on the left side of the dais. A handful of people already sit in the front row, including Admiral Hackett, who stands to greet them.

But Kaidan’s focus is on the seat at the end of the row, its occupant slouched with his chin in his hand, crutches leaning against the side of his chair.

Joker sits up a little straighter at the sight of them. It’s oddly comforting to watch his face pale when he catches sight of Hannah Shepard and puts two and two together. But he finds Kaidan about as quick as Kaidan finds him, and even Hackett falls silent as their eyes meet.

_(You get Liara and the others. I’ve got Joker.)_

“Lieutenant,” Hackett says.

Kaidan blinks, finally sees the outstretched hand of one of the most powerful and decorated soldiers in Alliance military history and takes it. “Admiral.”

“I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

“Yes, sir.”

Did Shepard leave a hole in Hackett like he had the rest of them? At times it felt like Anderson and Hackett were the only brass in the Alliance who believed anything Shepard tried to tell them. Anderson had thought of him as a son. What about Hackett? What was Shepard to him? A hero they needed? A weapon? Does it matter?

Joker follows Kaidan’s every move, but makes no move to get up, just as Kaidan makes no move to greet him.

_(Sam.)_

_(I’ll be fine.)_

Two steps. If Kaidan could take back those last two steps Shepard had given him, would it have made a difference? Would it have changed everything?

“Kaidan.”

He turns at the sound of Tali’s voice, eyes widening at the sight of her familiar purple hood. Before he can speak she throws her arms around him. He reciprocates the embrace automatically, tentatively at first. But the longer she holds on, the tighter he returns it.

“How are you?” she asks when she finally lets him go.

Kaidan’s mouth quirks in a wry smile. “A few days ago I thought I might never see you again. I’m the one who should be asking _you_ that.”

“How are you?” she repeats, putting a hand on his arm.

His smile fades. Tali knows. About Vancouver, about the last two weeks. She doesn’t know the details, but she _knows._ She and Joker are the only people in this giant space filled with representatives across the galaxy who do.

Somehow that makes it worse.

“I’m fine,” he says.

Before she can argue, Garrus steps into view from behind her and clears his throat, mandibles quivering. “You’re a hard person to track down, and that’s coming from me.”

“Garrus,” Kaidan says, surprised at how relieved he is to see him, though he almost doesn’t recognize him in formal wea, without his visor. For the first time in days the vise around his chest loosens just a little. “Hell, is it good to see you.”

“Was beginning to wonder if you were still in one piece,” Garrus replies.

“Yeah,” Kaidan says, guilt running through him at the thought of all those unanswered messages. “I know. I’m sorry. I just…” His voice threatens to break so he swallows up the rest of his sentence. There’s so much he needs to do. So many people he needs to respond to, but every time he opens his omnitool he just scrolls down to those three fucking words that are getting farther and farther from the top of his inbox.

“Kaidan,” Tali says, and there’s something gentle in her voice that nearly undoes him. “We’re your friends. It’s ok.”

Kaidan nods and exhales, looking back at the dais like a target through his scope until he gets control of his composure again. “Where’s Liara?” he asks when his voice steadies.

Now Garrus is the one who closes up. His mandibles tuck close to his face, and his brow plates shift. “She’s not coming.”

Kaidan frowns. He’s been meaning to check on her. He’s been meaning to do a lot of things. “Why?”

“How about we talk about it later. You know, I really wish this was a turian-style memorial right about now.”

“Why’s that?”

“There’s usually liquor, and I could really use a drink.”

A chuckle slips past Kaidan’s lips, a real one this time. He swallows it when he catches Joker’s gaze out of the corner of his eye.

The lights dim. Kaidan’s hand jumps to his hip for a pistol that isn’t there, heart rate shooting into the stratosphere until the lights come back up fully. _Saren isn’t here. There are no geth. There is no Sovereign clamped tight to the Tower._ All that’s left here are ghosts. He swallows.

Garrus herds them towards the second row, reserved for _Normandy_ crew. Kaidan winds up behind Hannah Shepard, with Tali and Garrus on his right. Two empty seats stretch out on his left, presumably the one left vacant by Liara, and the other…

Apparently Joker is as eager to avoid him as he is to avoid Joker.

It’s fine. They’ll figure it out later.

The Council takes the dais. Udina’s among them now. Shepard is dead and Udina got exactly what he wanted, despite grounding them when they’d needed his support the most. Kaidan shifts in his seat. If he has to listen to Udina herald Shepard’s greatness for an hour, humanity’s role in shaping intergalactic affairs might be short-lived.

Udina indeed leads them off. And he does herald Shepard’s greatness, though he glosses over the part where they’d stolen the _Normandy_. Hero of the Citadel probably plays better than mutiny.

_That name’ll never stick._ Shows what Shepard knew. It’s everywhere Kaidan looks.

He filters out Udina’s words. He doesn’t want them. None of them _mean_ anything to him. Udina and the rest of the Councilors talk about Shepard like he was an ideal, a symbol, an icon, not someone who whispered Kaidan’s name in the dark, who held onto him like the world was ending and kissed him like he’d never get another chance.

He’d never get another chance.

Why couldn’t he have taken that last step onto the fucking pod?

_He had a way of affecting everyone he ever met_ , Anderson had said. That’s because Shepard was whatever anyone needed him to be. A soldier. A confidant. A solution. Someone who didn’t care about the cost. Someone who did. Maybe Kaidan is no better than any of them. Maybe Shepard had just given him what he thought Kaidan needed, because Shepard gave and gave and gave and never fucking took anything for himself.

_(I wanted you_. _)_

Kaidan’s breath catches in his throat, Shepard’s voice so clear in his head he might as well have been sitting in that empty seat beside him and not floating somewhere, unrecoverable, over Alchera. Kaidan can still feel the weight of Sam’s head on his shoulder as they sat together on his parents’ balcony in Vancouver, watching the rain fall in curtains out over the bay, can still see the exposed look in his eye, hear the unease in his voice.

_(I wanted you more than anything I’ve ever wanted anything in my life_. _)_

Kaidan puts a fist to his mouth, willing back the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. _Not here. Not now._ Right now he has to sit in this damn chair and take it. Shepard saved the galaxy, then died saving Joker. If he could do that, Kaidan can sit in this _fucking_ chair and take it.

The rest of the Council speak their piece, but Kaidan doesn’t listen. Shepard had saved their lives after spending months screaming into the void, begging for their help. _Kaidan_ had advocated for saving their lives. Hearing them say so much as a goddamned word about his perseverance makes him wish he’d kept his mouth shut.

When Udina and the Council finish their tribute, Hackett rises from the front row and heads down to the dais. Kaidan tunes him out just like he tuned out the Council. The Alliance had sent him to Torfan demanding a victory, and when he gave it to them they crucified him. They gave him the _Normandy_ and said stop Saren, and when he did it they’d tried to pin him to the wall again. They’d pinned _everyone_ from the _Normandy_ to the wall, Kaidan included.

_They’re going to come at you,_ Shepard had said _. I’m just not sure how yet. They’re looking for leverage. A playbook they can go to if they need to keep us out of their hair. It’s about control._

That’s exactly what the inquest had been about. They’d hit Kaidan with a barrage of hypotheticals just to prove a point, and they’d succeeded. Shepard was born to make the kind of decisions that made it hard to sleep at night. Kaidan wasn’t. After his testimony, he and Shepard had stood in front of the bay throwing rocks at the water, Shepard silent while Kaidan vented his anger.

_They were_ vetting _me as your replacement. How much trouble I’d be if something happened to_ you _. And I—”_

He hadn’t been able to say the rest of it out loud.

_I don’t want to think about a galaxy without you in it._

That wetness at the corner of his eyes burns hot.

On the dais, Hackett falls silent. From all around the chamber, the echo of Shepard’s voice rings out, and Kaidan stops breathing.

_“Humanity’s first Spectre is probably the toughest challenge I’ve had yet. There’s a lot at stake. We have a lot to prove. I have a lot to prove.”_

Kaidan grips the armrest of his chair with white knuckles. The vise in his chest cranks too tight to force air into his lungs.

It’s just a recording, from an interview he’d given Emily Wong shortly after his induction ceremony. The voice of Commander Shepard, hope wrapped around hard edges, his words careful and crisp, reassuring, and somehow all off the cuff. Shepard never thought ahead, never practiced or prepared his rousing speeches. He did it all on the fly, pulling words out of thin air. The moment the microphone turned off and the camera pointed elsewhere, he’d look towards Kaidan with an uncertain, almost sheepish expression, _did I fuck it up this time?_

Kaidan grows more and more numb with each word. It’s tinny, filtered, the rich timbre of Shepard’s voice lost in this vast, open space.

Their time together had been so short. So laughably short. He’d loved Shepard for five years, and in the end all they had was two weeks. Two weeks to fall in love with the way his laugh would rumble right through Kaidan’s palm where it rested on his chest, the soft sigh of contentment when they lay together with entangled limbs, the way Sam would whisper his name. No recording would ever capture those things.

Kaidan was supposed to have them for a lifetime. Now he’ll never hear them again.

He pushes to his feet, fumbling a little to find his balance as he shoves past Garrus and Tali. Maybe they say something, maybe they don’t – Kaidan can’t hear anything over the echo of Shepard’s voice and the ringing in his ears.

He walks, not caring where, not caring who gets in his way or whether it causes a stir. He has to get away from that voice.

_(Did you know it would feel like this?)_

_(No.)_

He makes it all the way to the elevator even though later he can’t remember a single step, slams the button to take him back to the Presidium and slides to the floor, all the things he’ll never hear again following him all the way down.

~

Kaidan gets his orders a few hours later, while standing in front of one of the viewing ports down in the Wards, not far from Dr. Michel’s clinic. Nine months ago he’d stood right here with Shepard and Ashley Williams, looking at the runway of lights from the ward arms racing outward into infinity, wondering where humanity fit in it all.

Not the same view as it had been then. The damage is easy to see from here. Debris tumbles within the Citadel’s envelope, with large sections of Tayseri Ward still dark. He wonders what Shepard or Ashley would say if they saw it now.

When his omnitool blinks he almost ignores it. Garrus and Tali have been messaging him for an hour, trying to find him, but he can’t bring himself to answer.

He just needs a fucking minute to _breathe._

He checks the message anyway, and it’s a good thing. He’s to report to the _Kilimanjaro_ within two hours and catch a berth to Arcturus, where he’ll receive further instructions.

The _Kilimanjaro._ Captain Shepard’s ship.

Kaidan leans on the railing and rests his forehead in his hand, the knot in his stomach growing tighter. Once again he tries to take a deep breath. Once again, the ache in his chest keeps it at bay.

It’s okay. It’ll be fine. He can handle it. Chances are she won’t even know he’s there, and the chances of bumping into her on a dreadnaught is slim enough to begin with.

He’s gotten this far. If he can just get to Arcturus, get as far away from all of this as he can, maybe, just maybe, that vise will loosen and he’ll finally be able to breathe.

~

The _Kilimanjaro_ is huge, dwarfing the _Marrakesh_ and the _Madrid_ and any other cruiser Kaidan’s ever been on. It’s not unlike being on the Citadel or Arcturus in some ways. Instead of being surrounded by a collection of familiar faces, the corridors teem with Alliance soldiers who may have never seen each other before despite serving on the same ship for a whole tour.

That’s good. Makes it easy to get lost, blend in, escape any unwanted attention.

But it’s never that easy. Shepard taught him that a long time ago. Nothing goes according to plan. So he’s not surprised to receive an invitation from Captain Shepard to join her for dinner before the ship even hits the relay.

He’s not hungry. He certainly doesn’t want to see her. But with everything he knows about Hannah Shepard, the invitation might as well be an order.

What the hell does someone wear to dinner with a superior officer who happens to be the mother of your dead lover? He’s got no idea. Not that it matters. The only thing he has is the borrowed uniform he’d changed back into after returning the borrowed dress blues. It’ll have to do.

He follows the navpoint she’d sent him. It shouldn’t surprise him a dreadnought would have private hosting rooms – he can’t imagine how many diplomatic functions and high-level Alliance brass have made life and death decisions on a ship like this over the years – but it’s still a hell of a contrast to the _Normandy’s_ tiny, casual mess.

Captain Shepard is already inside the small room, facing the viewing port with her hands clasped behind her back at parade rest. A table fills up most of the space and is already set, with two covered trays at opposite ends. The smell of beef hits him as soon as he walks in, churning his painfully empty stomach.

“Lieutenant,” she says crisply, turning around to face him. So much like Sam. So unlike him at the same time. It’s been a long time since Sam looked at him the way she’s looking at him now – guarded curiosity, shield emitters fully powered up, analyzing his every move. He’d gotten so used to those warm eyes, the smile that lit up his face when Kaidan walked into the room.

But fuck, her eyes are just like his. The wrong color, but the intensity in them is so identical it sends a shiver down his spine.

“Captain.”

She gestures to one of the seats, and takes the other before he has to decide whether it’s proper etiquette to sit first. “Thank you for joining me.”

He nods, not quite trusting himself to speak. He can’t imagine what she wants with him. She certainly never wanted anything from Sam.

“Your invitation was…unexpected,” he confesses as he sits down.

“We did not get to speak after the service,” she says. “I was hoping to talk to someone who knew him well.”

Kaidan shifts in his chair as she pulls the cover off her plate and unwraps a set of silverware. Cloth napkin and everything. The _Kilimanjaro_ really knew how to make it look good.

“Captain Anderson knows him well,” Kaidan replies. The corner of her eye twitches. She’s not nearly as inscrutable as Shepard is. _Was._ If he didn’t want you to know what was on his mind, you wouldn’t.

“Captain Anderson and I have had our differences over the years,” she says stiffly.

Rather than walk into that minefield, Kaidan uncovers his tray. Steak, grilled asparagus and mashed potatoes, and of a quality several ticks above standard mess-hall fare. He stares at the potatoes, twirling a fork in them.

He hasn’t even seen mashed potatoes since his first couple of months on the _‘Yang_ , when he’d noticed a pattern to all of Shepard’s missed meals, and finally identified the common denominator.

He still doesn’t know exactly why mashed potatoes, of all things, were a trigger. He’s not even sure if Shepard realized it was a trigger at all – he’d certainly never said anything. But whenever they were on the menu, he’d tighten up, turn pale and abandon his tray. As soon as Kaidan worked out a deal with the mess sergeant to quit serving them, it stopped.

“Something wrong with the food?” she asks with a raised eyebrow.

“No,” he says. _Not anymore._ “Looks great.” He leaves the mashed potatoes alone, and cuts into the asparagus instead.

“You and Sam served together for a long time,” she says, spearing a bite of steak.

Kaidan nods, eyes on his plate. “That’s right.”

“Then you probably know we did not cross paths very often.”

Her tone is neutral but there’s an undercurrent to it that tells him to tread lightly. When he’d first come on to the _Myeongnyang,_ having a conversation with Shepard had been more exhausting than actual combat. Every word out of his mouth was strategic, a test, a gauge of some kind, and Kaidan could never figure out when he was passing or failing, or even what kind of intel Shepard was after. He’s betting the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

“We didn’t take a lot of shore leave,” Kaidan says after a careful pause. “Not many opportunities to get away.”

She finishes chewing and nods. “It was like that while Sam was growing up. He stayed with Daniel on Arcturus. I came home when I could.”

Kaidan says nothing. _Forgot what it was like to have a family,_ Shepard had told him. He cuts into the steak and takes an experimental bite. His stomach roils. Lately when he’s eaten anything it’s been protein shakes and energy bars.

“We were not close,” she says. “Losing him this way was always a risk, but you never really think...” She clears her throat. “I was hoping someone who was close to him could tell me what he was like.”

What was Shepard like. He almost laughs. They’d just sat through a memorial service with one person after another telling the galaxy what they thought Shepard was like. What could he even tell her that would matter?

All the things that do matter he can’t say out loud.

“The memorial painted a pretty good picture,” he says. Not that he’d been there for most of it. Turns out he couldn’t even give Shepard that much.

“I was pleased Admiral Hackett spoke,” she says, focused on her own food. “He’s followed Sam’s career for years.”

Kaidan grimaces. Hackett had been the one who’d sat Shepard down with that group of analysts in Vancouver to crunch the numbers and define just how dire a reaper invasion could be. Hackett had been the one who’d warned Shepard he’d be on an island, expected to continue fighting without allies and without support.

Kaidan frowns and looks up, meeting her gaze directly for the first time. “Why didn’t you speak?” he asks, surprised to discover he’s actually curious.

Captain Shepard’s fork freezes halfway to her mouth. She sets it down and tilts her head, engaging that directed energy stare again. “They didn’t ask me.”

Kaidan blinks. The whole thing was a PR show, and it certainly wasn’t public knowledge how estranged they were. A mother eulogizing her hero son would have been exactly the kind of moving moment they could run on newsfeeds for days.

“The Alliance doesn’t want the message to be about grief or mourning,” she says, as if reading his mind, something Sam did all the time. “They want a show of strength.”

“And you’re…ok with that?”

“I didn’t get to have an opinion,” she replies. She picks the fork up again and goes back to eating, as if the topic is as non-threatening as the weather. “I think you know as well as I do that ceremony wasn’t about me, or about you. Or even Sam. People like Steven Hackett don’t take an interest in Staff Commanders unless there’s something extraordinary about them. That memorial was about the Alliance, and I’ve served the Alliance my entire life.”

“He was more than a tool for the Alliance,” Kaidan says, unable to keep the anger out of his tone this time. “He was a person. A human being. He deserves a hell of a lot more than what we just gave him.”

Hannah Shepard wipes her hands on her napkin and rests them in her lap, expression turning shrewd. She’s just as canny and astute as her son was, and Kaidan has already said far more than he ever intended.

“So you did know him well,” she says in quiet triumph.

“Yes,” Kaidan says, spitting the word out like a bullet. “You want to know what he was like? He found the best in everyone. Wouldn’t rest until he figured out what made someone tick. He wanted everyone he served with to know their worth, because he didn’t know his own and it _haunted_ him.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Sam never doubted himself. He was the most confident person I know.”

Kaidan sets his fork down in disbelief. The first time he’d met Shepard, Kaidan had found him riding out a panic attack in a shitty bar on Arcturus, so crushed under the weight of Torfan’s ghosts he couldn’t breathe. _I did what they asked of me_ , he’d said years later. _I did what they asked and they hung me for it._

“You have no idea what you had, do you?” he says. “You have no idea what drove him.”

She frowns. There’s a hard edge to her voice when she speaks. “He wanted to be the best. Since he was little. Sam was a born competitor. Couldn’t settle for being anything but the best at everything he touched.”

Kaidan shakes his head, gut clenching when he thinks of all the times Shepard had pushed himself past his limits for the sake of anyone but himself. The biotic training. Torfan. The N7 designation. Becoming a Spectre. _None_ of that had been for him. “That’s not what he wanted to be.”

Captain Shepard raises an eyebrow. “Then enlighten me.”

Kaidan grits his teeth. He’s in way over his head now. So much for control. “Sorry, sir. I’m out of line.”

“Speak freely, Lieutenant,” she demands. “There is no rank at this table. I didn’t ask you here to salute me. I asked you here to tell me about my son.”

Kaidan curls his fingers tight around his napkin. _He fought with everything he had. He loved with even more. He carried the weight of the entire galaxy on his shoulders and never asked for help. He didn’t know how to live for himself because he was too busy living for everyone else, and I spent five years trying to prove to him how much he mattered. Because he mattered to me._

“All he wanted was to be _enough,”_ Kaidan says, anger melting into rage. “For _you._ And it was the only fight he couldn’t win. He could never be enough for you, because you never wanted anything from him in the first place.”

A heavy silence blankets the room. Captain Shepard leans back in her chair and props her chin in her hand. “Was he enough for you?”

_He was everything_.

“Why did you ask me here, Captain?” he asks. He can’t call her Shepard. He _can’t._ “What do you think I can give you?”

“I don’t know,” she says, and it’s truthful. “I suppose…death puts certain things in a different perspective.”

_He would have given you anything, and you waited too long,_ Kaidan thinks _._ But so had Kaidan. He’d kept everything he felt for Shepard in a box for five years. Imagine what they could have been if he’d had the courage to say something, _anything_ , instead of waiting until they were out of time.

If only he’d known how little time they’d have.

Kaidan forces a smile and stands. “Thank you for dinner, Captain Shepard, but I’m sorry, I can’t give you what you’re looking for. Your son was a hero. Every day I served with him I felt like we made a difference. I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget him. I’m sorry you didn’t know him the way I did. I think…you would have liked him.”

He leaves the dining room without waiting for a reply, putting as much distance between himself and Hannah Shepard as he can. Just a few weeks ago Shepard had asked him why he’d stopped that first morning five years ago on Arcturus, and been a friend to a stranger instead of an officer doing his duty. _You could have just reported my location and walked away,_ Shepard had said. _No one would have blamed you. I wouldn’t have blamed you._

Kaidan had thought about the answer to that question for years, but in the end it was simple. Kaidan was more than Vyrnnus’ broken neck. Maybe Shepard was more than the body count on Torfan.

So he’d been a friend instead of an officer doing his duty, and found the love of his life.

As he powers through the _Kilimanjaro’s_ mazelike corridors, not caring one iota where his feet take him, for the first time he wishes he’d done something, _anything_ else.

That morning, he should have just walked right on by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to learn more about the day Sam and Kaidan met, you can find it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26701675/chapters/65133250).


	6. Someone You Loved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan goes home. His parents are waiting. So are Sam Shepard's future pets.

_Now, the day bleeds into nightfall_  
_And you're not here to get me through it all_

x

**Someone You Loved**

Marc Alenko scans the faces filtering down the escalator at the Vancouver Spaceport, arms across his chest, chin propped in his hand. The arrival platform is crowded today, despite the downpour outside, and Alliance uniforms far outnumber the civilians. Command must be making some personnel changes. Either that or Arcturus just kicked out another graduating class. Most of these kids look so young. Then again, most of them do to him these days.

His omnitool pings with another message. Lora. Again. _Transport’s just late, everything is fine,_ he sends back.

Fine is relative, though. According to the message he received from Captain Anderson, everything is very much _not_ fine.

 _There was an incident on Arcturus during the debriefings,_ he’d said. _I kept it quiet and off his record on the condition he take six weeks leave, and he agreed. He could use some support. I’ve lost too many good soldiers to lose another to something like this._

Marc exhales against his fist.

An incident.

The Alenko track record with _incidents_ isn’t…exceptional. This morning was the first time in years he’d dreamt of Vyrnnus showing up at the door with a broken neck to drag Kaidan away.

Kaidan is always so young in his dreams.

It’s barely been six weeks since the inquest. Six weeks since Kaidan and Sam Shepard, the Butcher of _Torfan_ for chrissakes, had stayed in his home and shared a bed while defending the integrity of their service record in front of the most decorated members of the entire Systems Alliance.

And…god help him, he’d believed it was the right thing.

 _I think you need Shepard as much as he needs you,_ he’d told his son before Lora’s gala. Despite the risks to them _and_ the people around them. They _did_ need each other. It wasn’t even hard to see.

_What makes you think he needs me?_

Just like Kaidan to overlook the other half of that question. He never asked why Marc thought Kaidan needed _Shepard_. He wishes he’d told him then, over that bottle of wine, without waiting for the question.

 _Because Sam knew exactly how much you’re worth, and would have given anything to show it to you_.

But he hadn’t said it. The Alenkos never said aloud the things that really mattered. If they had, the disaster after BAaT never would have happened. They wouldn’t have gone the better part of a decade without seeing their own son. Maybe Kaidan wouldn’t have gone another three years without saying out loud that Shepard was more than just his commanding officer.

He’ll never forget the look on Kaidan’s face over that bottle of wine. _Do you ever wonder what we’d have been like – you, me and mom, I mean – if the biotics had never happened?_

He doesn’t wonder about that. He’s never wondered about that. He meant what he said that night. _Being a parent means loving your child for who he is, not who you want him to be_.

But he wonders all the time, all the _time_ , what they would have been like if they’d only spoken up when Kaidan needed them to. And not to tell him what to do, or how to fix what BAaT had nearly destroyed. He’d needed them to do what Shepard did so effortlessly. _Believe_ in him. Show him his own worth. And they hadn’t.

Commander Shepard. One of the Alliance’s most polarizing and recognizable faces, the man who had perhaps saved the entire galaxy from being invaded by an ancient race of machines, who’d stolen a prototype stealth ship, committed _mutiny,_ and then come back to Earth to answer for it. And yet he’d cared more about what the Alliance might do to Kaidan than he had about _any_ of it.

That’s what made fraternization so dangerous. Or so he’d thought.

Marc has seen firsthand the consequences of getting involved with a superior. Or a subordinate. Hell, after nearly fifty years with the Alliance he’s seen most things firsthand.

But not this.

Not losing two ships you’d called home in the space of four weeks. Not losing the person you loved and having to pretend he was just another soldier. Not that such things have never happened to others.

But none of those others were his only child.

A silhouette appears on the escalator that’s close to Kaidan’s build, but it’s not him. Marc taps his foot.

How much does Captain Anderson know? Does he at least guess what Kaidan really lost out there in the Terminus?

Captain David Anderson. Commander Sam Shepard. Two of the Alliance’s most decorated officers, and Kaidan served with both of them. No matter what a clusterfuck this all is, he can’t help a flash of pride. Kaidan’s career has eclipsed his own in so many ways, all by the age of thirty-two.

But what does any of it mean now?

Between BAaT, losing the _Myeongnyang_ , losing the _Normandy_ and losing Shepard, the Alliance has done nothing but take from him.

 _Loss like that would leave a hole in anyone,_ he’d told Kaidan over that bottle of wine. _But you? It would leave a gulf._

Then he’d just been talking about the ‘ _Yang,_ the ship and crew Kaidan had spent over four years with _._

What kind of a hole would this leave? Who was going to get off that shuttle?

He squints back at the escalator. A group of soldiers stand together laughing and talking too loudly. _Shore leave_. An older woman with officer bars gestures animatedly, making a point to someone on her comm. A pair of nervous cadets scan the crowd, looking for familiar faces. And then…there he is.

Kaidan rides the escalator down to the bottom level, one hand on the handrail, other holding the shoulder strap of his duffle bag. He doesn’t see Marc, not because he can’t find him in the crowd, but because he’s not really looking at anything at all.

By the way his clothes hang on him he’s dropped a good nine or ten kilos. Even this far away the dark circles stand out under his eyes.

It’s only been six weeks since the inquest in Vancouver. His son wears those six weeks like a lifetime.

“Kaidan,” he calls out, striding towards him.

Kaidan looks up, eyebrows raising briefly with recognition. By the time he reaches the bottom of the escalator Marc is waiting.

“Hey, Dad,” Kaidan says, mouth crooking in a half-smile.

They’ve never been good at this. The Alenkos do best when the tide is even, not when it floods. Fathers are supposed to have the answers to everything, but he doesn’t have one for this. So he does the only thing he can think of and puts an arm around him. Kaidan offers no resistance as Marc pulls him into an embrace. Tentatively, as though he’s not sure how, Kaidan hugs him back.

How Marc longs for the days when Kaidan was just a kid who would fit in his lap. But those days are long gone.

“I’m so sorry,” Marc tells him, not expecting his voice to waver.

“Yeah,” Kaidan says, pulling back and giving him that brittle half-smile again.

Marc lays a hand on Kaidan’s shoulder, looking for anything in his son that might tell him what to do, how to proceed. But Kaidan’s face is closed tighter than an airlock, so he merely squeezes once before letting go. “Come on, I’ve got a skycar.”

Kaidan nods and follows without a word. Marc pulls out his umbrella as they start walking towards the exit. “Been raining for three damn days.” He eyes Kaidan’s short-sleeved Alliance fatigues. November rain in Vancouver gets under anyone’s skin. “Got a jacket?”

Kaidan’s steady footfalls falter for just a step, and he takes several more before he answers. “No. Went down with the ship.”

Marc grimaces. Of course. _Everything_ had gone down with the ship. The duffle bag he carries is probably mostly empty.

“We’ll get you one.”

He should have asked more questions. Lora had pestered him half a dozen times to find out what sundries Kaidan needed. Hell, given how many things she’d picked up yesterday – a lot of civilian clothes, he’d noted – he can’t imagine Kaidan will be missing much. She’d even picked up a toothbrush and razor for him.

When they’d finally heard from him, _him,_ not the Alliance attaché confirming that the _Normandy_ had been destroyed but Kaidan Alenko was among the recovered crewmembers, it had been little more than reassurances he was fine, his itinerary, and one request: that if he was coming home, he wanted to go straight to the orchard. He and Lora had headed out there the next day to get the house ready. They don’t usually spend the winters out there. Nothing growing, too cold for Lora to ride and not much else to do aside from sitting in the living room of the old farmhouse and staring at the dead trees waiting for spring. But if that’s what Kaidan wanted, that’s what they’d give him.

The roar of the rain greets them when they exit the building. It’s an hour or two before dusk, not that you can tell through the iron curtain of sky. Marc holds the umbrella over them both, turning the roar into a sharp patter. The breeze is wet and bitter, so he picks up his pace. But Kaidan stops short, staring out at the roiling water of the bay like he’s seen a ghost. Marc nearly stumbles trying to keep the umbrella over both their heads.

“Kaidan?”

His son jumps, like he’d forgotten Marc was there. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“This way.”

Son of a bitch. Marc can’t remember where the hell he parked the skycar.

His entire military career he’d had a meticulous memory to go right along with a meticulous everything else. Retirement has eroded a lot more of that than he would like, especially _now._

They traipse through several aisles, splashing through the rain and trodding in puddles as Marc swears under his breath. Dammit. How long had it taken him to persuade Lora to stay home for this? And now they’re going to show up on the doorstep damp and shivering. She’ll fret over both of them the rest of the night. Kaidan’ll be back out the door before morning.

When they finally find it Kaidan throws his bag in the back seat and climbs inside, hair plastered to his forehead, about as soaked as if he’d been thrown in a pool.

“Sorry,” Marc mutters, arranging himself in the driver’s seat.

“Don’t worry about it,” Kaidan says, turning to stare at the window. Marc plugs in the address for the orchard and cranks the heater as the automated system kicks on. The skycar lifts off and skims through the local traffic lanes before angling upward into the less populated commuter lanes. It’ll be dark well before they get to Summerland and the turnoff for the orchard. They won’t even have the scenery of the BC Interior to occupy them.

For the next couple of hours it’s just them, alone in the car.

Now he wishes Lora were here. There’s no silence she can’t fill, and she does it with such grace. He’s learned a few things from her over the years, but not enough. Not for this.

Kaidan props his chin in his hand, gaze directed out the passenger side window, where rivulets of water run down the glass and blur the view of the bay. When the car turns and it vanishes from sight, Kaidan draws in a shaky breath that hits Marc’s heart like a knife. His son crosses his arms and tucks deeper into his seat, chin low, and looks straight ahead as Vancouver rushes past them. In this awkward hour between day and dark, under the shadow of wet clouds, a few lights from rising skyscrapers struggle to shine through the murk, but the constant drill of rain against the windshield makes it hard to see much of anything.

He’s lost so much weight. So _fast._ Lora’s going to lose her mind.

 _Say something. For once in your damn life_ say _something to him_.

“Kaidan…”

“Thanks for picking me up,” Kaidan interrupts, keeping his gaze trained on the windshield.

Of course. The Alenko way. Why talk about something real when you can talk about something safe?

“You don’t have to thank me.”

Kaidan shifts his legs, tugging at his wet pants where they cling to his calf. As he straightens back up Marc catches a glimpse of his face. It’s not blank. Not anymore. Now there’s a desperate look about him, like he’s seen the tidal wave approaching the shore with no hope of reaching higher ground. He turns back to the window, even though it’s only getting darker the closer they get to the outskirts of Vancouver, with less and less to see.

“Kaidan.”

“I’m fine,” he insists, though it comes out hoarse. “I just need to get out of Vancouver.”

Marc nods. The rain pelts the skycar, cocooning them in white noise.

“I’m…glad you’re here,” he says at last. “So’s your mom. She can’t wait to see you.”

Kaidan huffs, but still doesn’t make eye contact. “How did you manage to convince her not to come?”

“It took some doing,” Marc admits. “You know what she’s like. I figured you didn’t want to be fussed over the moment you walked out the airlock.”

A hint of a smile comes to Kaidan’s face, but it fades quickly.

Marc glances at him. Normally when they need something to talk about they can resort to work. But work is the last thing they can talk about right now.

Without the Alliance do they really have nothing to talk about? _You’ve seen him twice in ten years. What did you expect?_

In some ways, Sam may be the reason they have their son back at all. Would Kaidan have come home back in ‘80 had Shepard not accompanied him? Marc knows backup when he sees it, and Shepard had most definitely been Kaidan’s backup on that trip to the orchard.

Had Sam been the one who convinced Kaidan to give his family another chance? Had he given him the courage he needed to come home again? Does it matter?

Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t.

Dammit, he’s not good at this.

“Mom’s got a room ready for you,” he says. “The one upstairs you always liked, with the window seat.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ve done a lot of work on the house since you last saw it. Did some more modernizing. There’s a proper vidscreen in the kitchen. New wine cellar. Oh, and my favorite, heaters for the damn water troughs out in the paddock. No more getting up at six am to break ice for the horses.”

That hint of a smile returns. “How many does she have right now?”

“Three. She just picked up a new problem child two weeks again. She won’t listen to me when I tell her she’s getting too old to work with the headcases. Bones don’t mend as quick at our age.”

Kaidan shakes his head. “You’re never going to get her off the back of a horse.”

“No,” he says with a sigh. “But someone’s got to look out for her. She sure as hell won’t look after herself.”

The smile vanishes, expression growing distant. “Yeah. Know what you mean.”

It’s a mirror image of what he’d done after BAaT. Total shutdown, every ounce of his energy focused inward. They hadn’t been able to pull him out of it then. Hell, they’d made it worse by becoming part of the damage he’d needed to control. What if this time is no different?

It _will_ be different. If for no other reason than they won’t let him do it alone.

Marc looks at his son, hoping to catch his gaze, but Kaidan doesn’t turn his head. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through. But we’re here for you. Whatever you need.”

Kaidan rubs his forehead with a thumb, eyes downcast. “I’ll be okay, Dad. Just need to decompress a little.”

Marc fidgets with his hands. “Anderson said something happened on Arcturus.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Kaidan turns back to the window.

“If there’s anything—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Marc exhales. “Okay. We won’t talk about it.”

He flips the radio on, quickly switching to a station playing music rather than news. They ride in near silence for almost an hour. The rain peters off the farther they get from the coast, though the clouds hang stubbornly in place. No stars tonight. No moon, either. Just silhouettes of mountains leering in from either side.

“Kaidan,” he says, because there’s one thing he hasn’t said yet, and whether or not it helps, at least it’s something that matters.

“Yeah.” There’s wariness in his voice, like he’s bracing for that tidal wave.

“I love you. We both do. No matter what’s happened before, or whatever happens now. We love you, and we always will.”

The half-smile tugs at Kaidan’s lips again, but there’s an emptiness to it that’s even worse than the distance from a moment ago. He starts to say something, but then just swallows, nods and stares back out the window into the rushing dark.

~

Lora Alenko gave up waiting in the house an hour ago. She’s done nothing but stress clean all day. If she’d stayed inside for even a minute longer she’d have started ironing the curtains. The barn is a much better place to stay busy. Always something that needs sweeping, stalls that need mucking. And hell, the horses won’t care if their water buckets get changed an extra time today. Besides, the more she gets her hands on that new filly the better. She’s still fussy about having her feet picked.

She’d intended to clean some tack – there’s an old bridle in one of the trunks that might fit the new filly – but it’s cold enough that just the thought of getting her hands wet makes them ache. So instead, Athena is getting an extra grooming session. That’ll keep her occupied until Marc and Kaidan get here.

She ties Athena to the wall to keep her still and slips a hand into a curry mitt. In Lora’s nearly seventy years on this earth she’s yet to find a better way to relax than brushing on a horse.

But it’s not helping much tonight. She keeps listening for the sound of a skycar coming down the winding drive, looking for the flash of headlights.

The old mare’s thick winter coat is so full of static that the rubber teeth of the glove just pull dirt to the surface, where it clings stubbornly to the hairs. All she’s really done is make the horse look dirtier, while somehow also getting dust all over her shirt.

Well, it won’t be the first time Kaidan’s hugged her when she’s covered in horse.

Athena paws her foot, tugging at the cross tie tethering her to the wall of her stall with reproach in her eyes.

“Oh, hush,” Lora tells her, then nudges a pile of hay under the mare’s nose. When Athena grabs a mouthful and starts chomping Lora sighs, her breath coming out in a puff of steam. It’s a lot colder out here than it is in Vancouver, unseasonably cold for November. Getting up in the mornings to feed and pick stalls is going to be murder.

Part of her wishes she’d asked Arn to keep coming in the mornings and save her the hard work, but she’s hoping it’s something she can do with Kaidan once he gets here. He’s never cared much for the horses, but he’s like her. He likes to be busy. Normally the orchard is teeming with work for anyone looking to put their hands to use. But this time of year it’s all dormant. Harvest is done, even on the apples.

She can’t imagine that sitting around that old house staring out the window will be good for him.

 _Lora, don’t start assuming you know what’s best for him when we haven’t even laid eyes on him yet,_ Marc had said.

She has to stop _fixing._

That’s part of how it had all gone wrong in the first place, wasn’t it? Because she couldn’t just let anything go.

But they have a second chance, now. They’d failed him after Vyrnnus. They can’t fail him this time.

Still, that doesn’t mean she can’t have _options_ if Kaidan needs them. They can’t just spend the next six weeks sitting around the kitchen table starting at one another. She _will_ wind up ironing curtains.

 _Why do you think he wants to come here instead of Vancouver?_ Marc had asked.

Lora’s certainly got an idea about that. She still hasn’t told Marc the truth about the inquest – that Kaidan and Sam _hadn’t_ been romantically involved when they’d showed up less than two months ago.

Ever since that visit to the orchard back in ’80, when Kaidan had come home for the first time in years and brought Sam with him, Marc and Lora had both just…assumed. It’s not like they could _talk_ to him about it. Openly discussing fraternization through Alliance comm channels wasn’t exactly an option. When Lora had invited them both to stay at the condo she thought she’d been offering them a break from hiding their relationship, and giving Marc and herself a chance to get to know the man their son had fallen for.

But they’d been wrong, and rather than tell them the truth, Kaidan had simply brought Sam home with him anyway and let them continue believing it. And she’d bought it, hook, line, and sinker, right up until overhearing their crewmates discussing it.

She still doesn’t know why – why the lie, why the cover, why _Sam_ would ever dream of playing along while under an Alliance microscope.

Well. That’s not quite true. No matter _what_ they tried to tell themselves, she’d been _right._ They were just a little bit slower to pick up on the clues than she was. But they did, by the time the inquest was finished. She’d seen Sam kiss Kaidan on the balcony that last morning before they left. Hard to mistake that.

 _That’s_ why Kaidan doesn’t want to be in Vancouver, or stay in that condo. That’s where it had become _real_. She’d bet the next cherry crop on it.

And just a few short weeks later, it’s all gone.

At least Kaidan’s coming home. Sam kept his word.

_(You’ll look after him, right? Keep him safe?)_

_(Always.)_

She digs into Athena’s coat a little deeper.

Headlights from the driveway cast a beam of light through the stall window. Lora yanks the curry mitt off her hand, unclips the horse and hurries out of the stall, slamming the door shut with enough strength that it bounces back open a few centimeters and she almost misses the latch. In her hurry she almost trips over the cat, who hisses and shoots up onto a bale of hay. She jogs up the hill to the driveway just as the skycar comes to a stop, jamming her fists in her pockets while she waits for them to get out.

The house blazes with light – she’d wanted it to look welcoming – but it throws eerie shadows over the ground. She makes eye contact with Marc as he gets out of the car. His expression is drawn, brow creased.

She knows that look. She’d seen it all the time while he worked with the Alliance legal team to keep Kaidan from being extradited to the Turian Hierarchy over Vyrnnus’ death. Inside her pockets, her fists clench.

When Kaidan steps into the glow of the porch lights her eyes widen.

He’s lost so much _weight_. She glances swiftly at Marc, who has a look in his eyes that just says, _I know_.

She forces a smile, opens her arms and wraps her son up tight the moment he’s within reach.

“Hi, Mom,” he says.

She squeezes, hard, before letting him go and putting her hands on his shoulders. Reconciling the person she’d seen just six weeks ago with the one standing in front of her now is almost as hard as it was to see him leave Vancouver as a spindly kid and come back a soldier.

“Why are your clothes wet?” she asks with a frown. “Don’t you have a jacket? You must be _freezing_.”

“I’m fine.”

She wipes at his shirt. Dust from Athena is now caked on the front of him, sticking in clumps to the damp cloth. “Oh, hell. Sorry. I was in the barn. Don’t worry, I’ve got clothes for you. I made the bed up in your usual room and stocked the closet. Are you hungry? Come on inside, I have some soup in the fridge.”

“Lora,” Marc says, in a voice gently warning, _rein it in._

“Mom,” Kaidan says, stepping away from her. There’s a weary smile threatening his lips, but it does little more than threaten. “Take a deep breath.”

She exhales, biting her lip, then looks him in the eye. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Me, too.”

She leads the way into the house. That old floorboard in the foyer still creaks. So much of the house creaks. It’s over a century old, patchworked with upgrades and renovations over the years until it’s an eclectic mix of modern and rustic, with two generations of clutter laid overtop.

Kaidan pauses in the foyer, eyes scanning the living room before shifting his gaze right towards the kitchen. His shoulders sag a little. Relief, maybe? Exhaustion? He looks like he hasn’t slept in a year.

She puts a hand on his arm. “Go get changed into something comfortable. We’ll be in the kitchen.”

He nods and heads through the living room towards the stairs to the second level without a word. While Kaidan changes, she heats up a bowl of soup and puts a kettle of water on the stove for some chamomile tea. She can’t remember if he likes it.

Marc sits at the table and puts his chin in his hand.

“How is he?” she asks in a low voice.

“He didn’t say much,” he says with a dejected sigh. “Wouldn’t say anything about what happened on Arcturus. But, hell, look at him. It’s not good. Might have been a mistake for you to stay here after all.”

She shakes her head. “I drive him crazy. Hell, I’m the reason he left home in the first place, remember?”

“Lora.”

She wipes her eye. “You going to sit there and tell me I’m wrong?”

“Hey. You.”

She meets his gaze.

“We were a team then, and we’re a team now. We’re not the same people we used to be, and neither is he. This isn’t Vyrnnus.”

“No,” she whispers. “I think it’s worse.”

Marc has an answer for everything. But he doesn’t have one for that.

Both the soup and the tea are ready and waiting when Kaidan reappears. He joins them at the kitchen table, sips at the tea and toys with the soup, but he doesn’t eat much and says even less. Lora fills the silence with anything she can think of. The latest with the neighbors. Gossip from family friends Kaidan used to know. The new variety of peach trees they’ve planted for next year. Kaidan listens, nods occasionally.

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” he says when she hits a lull.

“Of course,” she says, surprised. “Kaidan, this is still _your_ home, too. It’s here whenever you need it. Whenever you _want_ it.”

That’s what she’s wanted, isn’t it? For years? For him to _want_ to come home? This probably doesn’t count as _wanting_ to come home. Captain Anderson’s message had been rather vague as to whether Kaidan had been ordered here, or if he’d chosen it willingly upon being told his leave was mandatory.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is he’s _here_.

“Anything you want to do while you’re here, anywhere you want to go, just say so,” Marc adds.

“I’ve got an appointment at Command on Wednesday morning,” Kaidan says, not quite looking at either of them.

“I thought you were on leave,” Lora says with a frown.

Marc drums his fingers on the table, eyes darting to her, then back to Kaidan. “You can take the skycar. Stay at the condo if you’d rather not go there and back in one day.”

“No,” Kaidan says sharply. It’s the first time there’s been any emotion in his voice at all. “I’ll come back as soon as it’s done.”

“Whatever you want,” Mac says.

Kaidan rubs his eyes. “It’s been a long day. If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to try and get some rest.”

“Whatever you need,” Marc says.

Kaidan nods, gets to his feet and grabs the duffle bag still sitting near the door. He hefts it too easily for there to be much in it.

“We love you,” Lora calls after him as he retreats. He pauses, looks over his shoulder and gives her that ghost of a smile.

“Love you, too.”

The distant creak of the stairs signal his retreat upstairs. Marc and Lora stare at each other in silence. Lora stirs her tea and takes a sip. It’s gotten cold. She gets up to reheat it.

Marc exhales. “He has a psych eval. That’s the appointment.”

“Did he tell you?” she asks, looking over her shoulder so quickly she spills some of the tea over the rim of her mug. She makes a frustrated sound and finds a rag.

He shakes his head. “SOP.”

Of course. Stupid. She sits back down, but doesn’t drink the tea. Instead she puts an elbow on the table and runs fingers through her tangled hair. “He’s lost so much weight.”

“Yeah. I saw that.”

Lora reaches for his hand across the table. He takes it and squeezes. “Marc, it can’t...be like before. We just got him back.”

“It won’t be,” he says.

Over a decade ago they’d almost lost Kaidan because they didn’t know how to help him. Have they really changed so much since then it will be different this time?

She has no idea how to help him through this.

The Alliance showing up at the door to tell her Marc was dead has always been her worst nightmare. Her son is living that nightmare, while Marc is still right here, alive and breathing, holding her hand the way he has for forty years.

“Hey, you,” she says. “Kiss me.”

He doesn’t ask why. He never asks why. He just gets to his feet, circles the table until he reaches her side, pulls her out of her chair and does exactly what she asks, soft slow, just the way she likes.

When they part she lays her head against his chest. “He was so happy.”

Marc wraps her into a hug. “He’ll get through it. We’ll all get through it.”

She almost believes him.

~

_The galley is always quiet this deep into third watch. Without the usual background chatter of the crew, the hiss and crackle of the griddle echoes like firecrackers. Kaidan pokes at the batter, humming a little to himself, smiling when the hairs on his arms stand on end. The feel of Shepard’s biotic field is as natural as breathing._

_“Hey, you,” Shepard says, coming up behind him and circling his arms around Kaidan’s waist._

_“Hey. Wondered when you were going to show up. Was beginning to think I’d have to eat these by myself.”_

_Shepard presses a kiss against Kaidan’s cheek. “What is it with you and pancakes?”_

_“Felt appropriate,” Kaidan replies, reveling in the way Sam molds his body around him._

_“The way I remember it, you only resort to pancakes when I’m a walking disaster.”_

_“_ Walking _disaster? You only do disaster at a dead sprint.”_

_Shepard chuckles. “So what disaster did I sprint into this time?”_

_Kaidan slips a spatula under a pancake and flips it onto a plate. “I guess that depends on your definition of disaster.”_

_Shepard lets go of him and rests an elbow on the counter, body slouched, eyebrow raised, directed energy gaze catching Kaidan’s eyes and holding him captive. “If you’re insinuating that loving you is a disaster, then we need to revisit your definition.”_

_Now it’s Kaidan’s turn to smile. “No. Maybe I just felt a little sentimental.”_

_A look enters Shepard’s eyes that makes Kaidan’s stomach flip. “Thinking of the day we met?”_

_He adds two more pancakes to the stack and pours more batter onto the griddle. “Yeah. I don’t know why.”_

_Shepard grabs Kaidan’s wrist, pulling him into his arms, where his mouth is waiting._

_No one kisses like Sam. No one has_ ever _made him feel like this, like he’s the center of the universe. So much of Shepard is wrapped up in shotguns and sharp edges, dark energy and suit breaches, armor plating and kinetic barriers. But not here. Not this. In moments like this he’s warm, soft, the only place Kaidan ever wants to be._

_They part just far enough to catch their breath, still close enough their noses touch._

_“Just a guess,” Shepard murmurs, “but could you be trying to figure out how you went from using pancakes to help a stranger get through a panic attack to…that?”_

_“Yeah,” Kaidan says, still breathless. “That probably has something to do with it, now that you mention it.”_

_“I’m very memorable, what can I say.”_

_Kaidan runs a thumb across his cheek. “That you are.”_

_Shepard kisses him once more. Soft. Slow. Like they have all the time in the world._

_Unease stirs in Kaidan’s chest._

_Shepard cups the back of Kaidan’s neck. “I was such a mess that day. Sometimes it feels like those fucking pancakes saved my life. But it wasn’t the pancakes. It was you. You always show up when I need you.”_

_The unease turns to dread. “No. Not always.”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“I…can’t remember.” He grips Shepard tighter. “Sam. I’m sorry. Just…don’t let go. Don’t let me go and it won’t matter. None of it will matter. Just,_ please, _don’t let me go.”_

 _The stench of charred batter fills his nose. Shit. The pancakes._ Shit. _Shepard moves like smoke, pushing Kaidan to the side to get to the blackened, burning remnants. In his hurry to cut off the heat he burns his arm against the griddle and hisses through his teeth._

_“Sam!”_

_Shepard hesitates. Takes two steps back to Kaidan and grips his head in both hands, pressing their foreheads together._

_“I’ll be fine.”_

_~_

Kaidan’s eyes snap open.

Grey, early morning light streams through the window across the room. In the dark last night he hadn’t thought to shut the blinds.

He stares at the ceiling.

It’s so still. No biotic field ghosting the nerve endings under his skin. The gravity well sits untouched. The space beside him is empty, no indent in the pillow. The blanket is still straight and crisp as an ironed uniform.

_(Sam, you are a nightmare to share a bed with.)_

_(Your nightmare now.)_

The knot in his chest tightens. He curls his fingers over it and closes his eyes. Forces a swallow past the lump in his throat.

Why had he let go?

Outside, a horse whinnies followed by the clank of a bucket. His mother’s up, working in the barn. He should be up, too. Would have been a long time ago if he were still on Arcturus. But no, he’d gone and fucked that up pretty good.

He opens his eyes and gazes back at the ceiling.

Mandatory leave. He’s not sure which was worse, the look in Joker’s eyes when Kaidan pinned him to the wall, or the pity in Anderson’s over the vidcom when he’d sent Kaidan the orders: go home or get the fuck out.

He draws in a shallow breath that shakes on the way in, shakes on the way out.

He shouldn’t have stopped when he’d walked out of his debriefing. He should have kept right on going when Joker called his name. He should have slept the night before, should have eaten something that morning rather than staring at a plate of bacon and eggs and leaving it untouched. He shouldn’t have let Shepard go alone, should never have asked for those last two steps. But even if he had done none of those things, he should have taken a deep breath and just walked away.

But he can’t _breathe_.

Kaidan lays his arm across his forehead. It’s so still in here he wants to scream.

_So get up._

He pulls the covers off and sits up, wincing when his bare feet touch the cold wood floor. He’d forgotten how frigid the house can get, even with the heat on. They come out here in the winter so seldom.

The chronometer on the nightstand shows 07:00. Last time he’d looked at it, it’d read 03:45. Kaidan shivers a little as he stands up. A few quick tugs of the blanket and it looks like no one even slept in the bed. No need to take it apart and remake it anymore.

After locating a pair of socks he opens the closet. His mother sure had stocked it. He finds a shirt and a sweater that hang a little loose on him, but fit well enough. There’s a coat stashed in there, too. New, still with the tags on it. Made from down, thick and comfy. Nothing like the leather one that had gone down with the ship.

Good.

That one hadn’t been his anymore, anyway.

He grabs it off the hanger and heads downstairs. Thankfully the coffee pot in the kitchen is still hot and nearly full. He leans in to take a close look at it before remembering that Shepard didn’t make it, and it won’t taste like motor oil.

_(You realize that once this honeymoon phase is over it’s going to be all-out war on that coffee pot, right?)_

Shepard’s voice in his ear feels so real he looks to his left, hope rising in his chest, but only finds empty space.

He braces his hands against the counter, hangs his head and forces air into his lungs. It hurts just as much on the way in as it does the way out.

Why can’t he just _breathe?_

He finds a thermos and pours coffee in. A box of granola bars sits out on the counter – his mother’s go-to breakfast for decades – but the thought of eating anything churns his stomach. Not something he can keep doing, but it helps that he hasn’t so much as flexed his fingers into the gravity well since Arcturus.

Besides, Shepard is the one whose blood sugar was impossible to maintain. One of the few ways he was fragile.

Joker’s smirk flashes through his mind.

_(Right about now I bet you’re wishing you’d stuck to that fraternization excuse, huh?)_

If he’d stopped to think, to take a deep breath, maybe he would have noticed the haunted look in the helmsman’s eyes, realized how brittle that smirk was.

But he hadn’t stopped to think. And he couldn’t _breathe._

Kaidan leaves the house and is halfway down the hill to the barn before remembering he hadn’t added cream or sugar to the coffee. To hell with it. You couldn’t make coffee bitter enough to suit Shepard’s tastes. Kaidan can take it black for a morning.

 _You can say it,_ Joker had said, through gritted teeth, back pressed against the wall with Kaidan’s arm against his throat. _I killed him. Just fucking_ say _it already._

Kaidan hadn’t said it. The words had been on the tip of his tongue, but he hadn’t said it. That was right about the time another officer had stepped in to pull them apart, and Kaidan had looked down at his closed fist in horror, the whisper of dark energy welling around his fingers. The lieutenant who’d grabbed him, Kaidan didn’t know his name and never wanted to, had let go of Kaidan’s arm like it had burned him and backed away.

He’d fractured Joker’s collar bone, but could have _killed_ him. A little more pressure and Kaidan might have broken his neck. The Alliance should have cat-sixed him right there, but Anderson had gotten wind of it, how Kaidan doesn’t know, and intervened.

So instead of a court martial or a discharge, he’d been ordered to take six weeks of mandatory leave and get a psych eval once he landed.

Not the first time he’s come home after killing someone. The fact that Joker hadn’t actually died doesn’t really matter.

Because Shepard had.

Kaidan comes to a stop outside the barn, closing his eyes and listening to the clatter from within as his mother goes about the morning routine. A breeze passes through him, stiff but refreshing, lacking the bite from last night. He turns his head into it. There’s nothing quite like a real breeze.

 _Ok, maybe you’re not entirely wrong,_ Shepard had said when Kaidan brought him here to the orchard, his first real trip to Earth that didn’t involve spec ops training. _Growing up planetside might have a few perks._

The sunrise that morning had been spectacular, a riot of color glowing through a handful of drifting clouds. Like the sky had put on a show just for Shepard.

The ache in his chest deepens. He takes a sharp breath and pulls open the barn door.

Inside, his mother drags a kinked hose to one of the stalls. She shoves it through the bars and lets go, releasing a spate of water into the plastic bucket hanging inside. A horse noses the bars, lipping at the hose.

“Let go, you little shit,” his mother mutters with a playful shove.

“Hey,” Kaidan says.

She jumps. “Kaidan! You’re up.”

He nods.

“Sleep ok? Bed comfortable?”

“Slept fine,” he lies. “Thanks for the clothes.”

“Of course.”

He gestures with his arms. “Put me to work.”

Her face lights up. “Throw a flake of hay for Athena?” She points to the next stall. “And Pallas? I’ll get the new filly. She’s a hotheaded little thing with no respect for personal space. Don’t want her to run you over.”

“Yeah, sure.”

The smell of hay and leather isn’t one he’s particularly attached to, but it’s certainly familiar. His mother tried so hard to get him interested in learning to ride growing up. Aside from sitting on the back of a horse a couple of times as a kid to placate her, she’d never succeeded. But he’d done enough chores around the barn to know the drill. He grabs a box cutter from a shelf in the tack room, same place it’s been for decades, cuts the twine off a bale of hay and grabs a few flakes, wrinkling his nose as the dust tickles it.

A scruffy gold and black cat with baleful green eyes watches him suspiciously from a shelf between bottles of shampoo and fly spray. When Kaidan passes by, it growls and flicks its tail.

“That’s Major Tom,” his mother calls over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, she hates everyone.”

“She?”

His mother shrugs. “We goofed. The name stuck anyway.”

Kaidan raises his eyebrow at the Major, who appears unimpressed, so he keeps going to the first stall.

Athena had been around three years ago when he’d brought Shepard here. Tall, dark bay mare with a big white blaze, coat thick and fuzzy like new carpet. Shepard had walked right up to her, never having seen a horse in his life, and stuck a carrot right under her nose while patting her right in the center of that white blaze. No fear. Shepard never balked at anything that could hurt him. It was the little things that gave him pause, like the spider he’d found on the wall in the shower. He’d come down the hall in a towel to find Kaidan and have him dispose of it. Kaidan had been a lot more distracted by Shepard in a towel than he had the spider.

God, he was beautiful. His heart constricts.

 _Not here,_ he thinks. _Focus. Do the work._

The mare noses at him when he enters the stall, maybe looking for a carrot, maybe sensing those mutant eezo nodes hidden under his skin. When he doesn’t prove immediately interesting or forthcoming with treats, she turns to the hay. He tosses the flake on the ground and lays a hand on her muscled shoulder while she tears into it, running fingers through that thick coat.

Shepard had been so fascinated by this giant, domesticated animal. Would have climbed right on her back if his mother had let him. She almost had _._ Shepard could charm anyone when he put his mind to it.

The mare picks her head up, working a mouthful of hay. Kaidan runs a thumb over the blaze, the same spot where Shepard’s hand had been.

 _She’s soft,_ Shepard had said.

Athena blinks at him, then drops her head again.

Kaidan backs out of the stall and throws another flake to Pallas, a heavy, shaggy gelding with a sway in his back and a fleabitten grey coat covered in dirt.

“Where’d the old man come from?” Kaidan asks.

“Farm over in Summerland,” she replies. “He had a puncture wound that made him tough to keep sound, so his owner was looking for a place where he could be a retired lawn ornament. He’s a good boy.”

She comes to stand beside Kaidan, peering through the bars as Pallas chomps his hay. “Even with the bad foot he’s an easier keeper than the new kid over there.” She nods towards the third occupied stall.

“Dad said she was a problem child.”

His mother nods, taking him over to the stall in question. A bay filly with a rich, red coat blinks at them from within, a splash of white in the shape of a pinwheel peeking through her forelock.

“Just a yearling,” his mother says. “Hasn’t been handled much. She’s got zero patience and can’t stand still to save her life. We’ll see what happens when she’s old enough to try putting a saddle on her.”

Kaidan swallows. _Sounds just like you_. He wraps his fingers around the bars and leans his forehead against them. The filly stamps her foot, then stretches her neck towards Kaidan. He jerks his hands away as she pulls back her lips and runs her teeth up and down one of the bars.

“See?” his mother says affectionately. “Busybody.”

Kaidan forces a smile. “She have a name?”

“Dad said if I was going to bring home another stray he wanted to name her. I think he was tired of my Greek theme, so he went with Echo.”

“Echo,” Kaidan says. “Ok.”

“Watch yourself, I’m going to turn her out.” She grabs a halter off a hook and lifts the latch on the stall door.

Turns out his mother isn’t kidding. The little filly bolts out of the stall the moment the halter is on, hooves clattering over the ground as she spins in a circle. His mother lays an elbow into her chest to slow her down, speaking in low tones as she hangs onto the leadrope, a determined anchor holding onto a tempest.

Kaidan retreats to the hill outside the barn, arms folded across his chest as his mother wrangles the wayward filly. Eventually Echo arches her neck and consents to an impatient jog beside Kaidan’s mother as she leads her out of the barn and towards the paddock.

When the gate is safely closed behind them, she slips the halter off and the filly charges across the field, kicking up her heels and galloping to the opposite fence at full speed before skidding to a stop with her nose mere centimeters from the wooden boards. She snorts, pivots with her tail in the air, and does it again, churning up clouds of dirt in her wake. Each time Kaidan braces himself for her to crash into the fence, but she never does. As if the universe goes out of its way to bend to her will and avoid disaster.

A lump forms in his throat. He turns and walks back towards the house, where his father leans against the porch railing, drinking coffee.

“Mom should have been the one in the marines,” Kaidan says, coming to stand beside him. “I have no idea how she thinks she can outmuscle something that big with that little sense, and yet she does it every time.”

His father gruffs into his coffee. They watch the little red horse run.

“Made breakfast,” his father says. “If you’re hungry.”

Kaidan’s not. But he nods. “Thanks.”

“I’m heading into town in a little bit if you need anything. Got a few meetings to take this afternoon, and might have to make a trip back to the city in a couple of days. We could ride in together if you want company for your appointment.”

The psych eval. No sense in wondering if his father knows. Of course he does. He’d been with the Alliance for almost fifty years. He knows how it works.

Kaidan digs his toe against the wood decking of the porch. “You know you don’t have to upend your entire routine because I’m here. If you have things to do in Vancouver, don’t let me stop you. You don’t have to stay.”

His father stares into his coffee mug, breath coming out of his mouth in a cloud of steam, before looking back out towards the paddock. “I’d like to think I can learn from my mistakes.”

“This is different.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” Kaidan says, harsher than he intends to. “I’m not seventeen this time.”

“No. You’re not. But you _are_ hurting.”

“I’m fine.”

“Is that why you’re here, then, and not on Arcturus?”

Kaidan’s jaw tightens. Out in the field, the filly slows to a walk, circles a patch of dirt before dropping and rolling, legs kicking up in the air.

He’s here because Anderson gave him no choice. Because he’d pinned Joker, his _friend,_ up against a wall and had a hand in the gravity well before he’d come to his senses enough to let him go. Because the _Normandy_ is in pieces, Shepard is dead, and his entire life got left behind as soon as the _Marrakesh_ engaged FTL and left Alchera.

He’s here because every time he thinks of Sam the hole in his chest gets bigger, and he thinks of Sam _all the time_.

“I’m fine,” he repeats, and disappears into the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates might be a little slow for a bit - this story is murder to try and write during the holidays. But in return for waiting I have several prompts in my inbox that I plan to fill, including a few "winter" themed ones that should make for some feel-good fuzzies. Keep an eye on [Opus - The Multiverse](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006281) for those stories!


	7. The Courage of Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you can't make it on your own.

_I'd give anything to hear_   
_You say it one more time_   
_That the universe was made_   
_Just to be seen by my eyes_

[x](https://open.spotify.com/track/3tJjZMHLqhD8DaGgdBICnc?si=GROUKYDwSxOofb64MRNzjQ&rdquo)

**The Courage of Stars**

****

Art by [PixelAgora](https://thepixelagora.tumblr.com/)

The officer administering Kaidan’s psych eval – a lieutenant with greying hair and a detached expression who’s awfully comfortable behind a desk – gives him a brief, thin smile when he comes in, explains the process and proceeds to question him. It’s clinical, detached, all of Kaidan’s stress and grief and anger distilled into a black and white Alliance form with yes or no checkboxes waiting to be filled in.

No sense in trying to lie his way through it, not with the incident report from Arcturus right there on the desk.

_Have you been on the verge of losing control of your anger, or had thoughts or concerns that you might hurt someone?_

Pretty sure nearly breaking the collar bone of the pilot who’d taken out Sovereign makes it hard to say no. Doesn’t matter that Joker had goaded him. Doesn’t matter that Joker had almost looked _relieved_ when Kaidan shoved him up against that wall, like he’d finally gotten to take the deep breath Kaidan is still looking for.

It doesn’t matter.

Kaidan scratches the back of his neck, fingers grazing the amp port, the point of connection to the wetware wired into his brain. Is Vyrnnus’ death somewhere in the lieutenant’s notes? Is he watching Kaidan for the signs other L2s exhibited before snapping?

He’s always wondered if that day would come for him.

“Yes.”

_Do you have difficulty falling or staying asleep?_

He’s so exhausted his hands shake. He didn’t know you could be so tired and still not be able to sleep. When he does manage to get a few hours, he wakes up feeling like he never closed his eyes at all. He’s in no shape to hold a gun, much less run a squad of marines. Not without sleep. He can’t _think._ If he could just _think_ maybe he could get a handle on this.

“Yes.”

_Have you had nightmares about it?_

Waking up is the nightmare. It’s like losing him all over again. But the dreams are all he’s got. They’re the only place Sam _is._ Simultaneously dreading closing his eyes and never wanting to open them is a logic nightmare that’s ripping him in half.

“Yes.”

_Have you thought about it when you didn’t want to?_

He actually laughs. Every time he closes his eyes he smells the charred alloy and leaking coolant, sees Sam take those two traitorous steps towards him and not the bridge, hears the clack of their faceplates coming together that last time, _I’ll be fine_ ringing in his ears.

“Yes,” he says, when the lieutenant waits patiently for the affirmation. Apparently bitter laughter doesn’t check any of the boxes.

_Does this interfere with your daily functioning?_

He supposes that depends on what kind of functioning they’re looking for. He mucks stalls just fine. Helped his mother patch the fence the other day. Promised his father he’d help put a new roof on the shed where they keep the tractor. But it’s all rote – like he’s a programmed VI.

He hasn’t replied to a single message since leaving Arcturus. Before that, he’d only addressed what was needed to stay in his uniform. Tali, Garrus, Pendergrass, even Aslany, keep trying to reach him, but he’s archived every single one of their attempts without opening them. The moment he tries to think about what he would say, what he might tell them, he can’t breathe.

And then there’s the message he hasn’t sent.

A few years ago, he and Shepard had exchanged letters. _Those_ kinds of letters. Just in case. Kaidan had given Shepard a holo he’d recorded for his parents. Shepard’s was for Anderson.

Kaidan still has it. But he can’t bring himself to send it. Whenever he thinks about it everything constricts, the weight sitting on his chest too big and too heavy to dislodge.

It belongs to Anderson. It’s not Kaidan’s to keep. But he can’t shake his anger that Anderson will get a goodbye, something to help him grieve and move on, while Kaidan fights just to tread water.

“Yes.”

By the time Kaidan leaves he has an appointment set up with a therapist and an update to his personnel file.

_Relieved from active duty, pending further evaluation_.

Doesn’t matter right now, but when his mandated leave ends it’s going to matter a lot.

_The Alliance is here to give you the support you need_ , the lieutenant tells him.

Kaidan wonders how much that support would stick if they knew what he was really grieving.

Shepard saved him from a court martial for mutiny. Anderson saved him from a Cat 6 for the outburst on Arcturus. But to make any of it matter now, he’ll have to save himself.

_Can_ he?

Does he want to? He’s given everything to the Alliance. What does he even have left to offer?

Damnit, why can’t he just breathe?

He heads straight for the skycar and sets the nav back to the orchard, avoiding any glimpse of the bay as a light rain begins to fall. Walking through the sprawling Alliance campus just a few short weeks after the inquest is almost more than he can bear, but the thought of the bay makes his stomach turn.

Once the skycar engages and slips into traffic he stares straight ahead, eyes closed, until Vancouver fades into the snow-capped mountains of the BC Interior. Where there is no Alliance Command, there is no English Bay, and there is no rain.

~

When he gets home both of his parents sit at the kitchen table, waiting. His mother stands up so quickly when he comes in she nearly knocks the chair over.

“How did it go?” she asks, hope and a million questions written all over her face.

He forces a smile, heads for the cabinet to grab a glass and fills it with water. “Fine.”

He leaves the kitchen before any of her questions can come out and heads up the stairs towards his bedroom.

He’ll worry about all of it later. _Later_. When he can breathe. He can fix all of it once he can find some room to breathe.

_Sam. I can’t breathe._

No one answers.

~

He goes to the Alliance recommended therapist. _It’ll help_ , he tells himself. It has to help. _Something_ has to. He’s been on the ground for a week now and nothing’s changed.

But the therapist, a woman who specializes in trauma and post-traumatic stress, only talks about the _Normandy._ Abandoning ship. The twenty-six hours he spent in that escape pod, waiting for rescue.

She doesn’t know. Not about Shepard. She doesn’t know that Kaidan had woken up with him that morning thinking they had their entire lives in front of them. She doesn’t know that he’d kissed him before leaving his cabin not realizing he’d never do it again. She doesn’t _know_.

And Kaidan can’t tell her. Not if he wants to be reinstated.

So he listens to her words of comfort, her assurances he’s not alone. Tells her about the _Normandy’s_ final moments when she asks, about rescuing Tali, Liara, Adams and Barrett from the elevator shaft, about barely making it onto the escape pod, about taking command, performing triage. About waiting. Wondering.

He says nothing about those last two steps Shepard had taken back towards him, and how they’d cost him everything.

_It’s not about the ship_ , he wants to scream, but doesn’t. Can’t.

He makes a second appointment, smiles, and thanks her when he leaves.

~

It rains for the next two days. Kaidan sits in silence out on the porch swing late in the afternoon, wearing the jacket that isn’t his, braving the damp, chill air and the wind just to watch it fall. His mother comes out to join him for a while, wrapped in a blanket, thermos of hot apple cider in each hand. He can’t think of the last time she made apple cider. It was one of his favorite things as a kid. Kaidan takes one from her with a thank you, but lapses back into silence. A few times she tries to engage him in conversation, but it doesn’t last.

“You can talk to us, you know,” she says gently.

What does she want him to say?

_He told me he loved me in the rain. I kissed him until we couldn’t breathe. When we got back to the condo I held him while we sat on the balcony, rain coming down in sheets, and it was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life._

“I’m fine,” he says.

Eventually she pats him on the knee and gets up. “Dinner will be ready soon.”

He nods. By the time he goes inside his fingers and toes are numb, his nose is red and running, and the cider is cold.

_You’re everything to me,_ Shepard had told him that morning, as water dripped from their noses and pooled in their boots.

He lets the door slam behind him.

Fuck the rain.

~

When the rain finally stops and the ground dries out a little he helps his father put the new roof on that shed. Manual labor certainly isn’t something he’s a stranger to, but this kind of work puts demand on a completely different set of muscles than racking rifles and hauling around in his combat armor. It’s good. He doesn’t have to think. There’s just work, movement, something to swallow up the quiet.

The wind is sharp, but refreshing. He throws himself into the work until he’s stiff and sore and feeling every single year of wear and tear the Alliance has put on his body.

Maybe it’s enough wear and tear.

_That’s the easy way out_ , Shepard would say. _Nothing ever gets done the easy way._ Shepard didn’t know how to turn down a fight.

_If you wanted me to fight you shouldn’t have fucking left me here,_ Kaidan thinks. _Five years and I never let you do it alone._

They take a break midday to warm up and grab some lunch, and for the first time in days Kaidan doesn’t have to force himself to eat it.

His father eyes him over a plate of leftover pot roast. “Feeling ok?”

“Yeah,” Kaidan says, and it’s almost the truth. Being in need of a heavy dose of aspirin is a kind of ache he at least understands.

His father’s brow furrows. “If you need help navigating Alliance waters, you know I’m here for you, right? I worked Internal Affairs for a long time. I can help.”

Kaidan pushes his fork around his plate. “I’ve got it.”

“Kaidan.”

“I’ll handle it, Dad.”

They don’t say much the rest of the afternoon. By the time Kaidan retires for the evening he’s exhausted enough to sleep, _really_ sleep. The kind of sleep where you don’t dream.

_Please don’t dream_.

~

_They lie together twisted in the sheets, Shepard gazing at him with a drowsy smile on his face, fingers carding through Kaidan’s hair._

_“Hey, you,” Shepard murmurs. “Thought you’d fallen asleep.”_

_“Not yet.” Kaidan closes his eyes, relishing the feel of Shepard’s fingers. “Though if you keep that up, I might.”_

_“Can’t help it. Now that I know what it feels like to touch you, I don’t know how to stop.”_

_“Mmm. That sounds like great news for me.”_

_Shepard’s smile gets wider, until it crinkles the corners of his eyes._

_His smile is so beautiful. Kaidan traces the contours of it with his thumb. So few people have ever seen him smile like this. For all he knows, Kaidan is the only one._

_“What’re you thinking about?” Shepard asks._

_Galaxies. Quarks. The fusion of stars. Shepard is all of those things and more. How does he put it into words?_

_Instead Kaidan slides closer and kisses him. Deep, slow, like nothing else exists. Because right now, nothing else does. Just the soft press of his lips, the whisper of their biotic fields passing through one another, the warmth of his skin._

_Shepard slips a knee between Kaidan’s legs, arm circling his waist and pulling him flush, every touch a new revelation._

_A soft sigh slips from Kaidan’s throat. This is the kind of kiss he wants to grow old with._

_“I love you,” he murmurs against Shepard’s mouth._

_Shepard brushes his lips one more time, then cups Kaidan’s cheek with his palm. “I love you, too. Remember that.”_

_Kaidan traps his hand and closes his eyes, just listening to him breathe. Because he_ is _breathing. In here he’s safe, there’s air, they have all the time in the world. Kaidan throws an arm around him, nestling closer, eyelids heavy, limbs leaden and warm._

_He’s so tired._

_Shepard brushes a thumb across his forehead. “Get some sleep, Kaidan.”_

_A knot forms in his stomach. “But you’ll leave.”_

_“I’m right here.”_

_Kaidan’s eyes flutter back open to find Sam gazing back at him. “Please stay. This time I need you to stay. When I wake up you have to be there.”_

_“Kaidan.”_

_“_ Please _, Sam. I can’t…don’t make me do this without you. I don’t know how. I need you. You can’t leave me.”_

_Shepard presses a kiss to his forehead. “I’ve got you. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”_

~

Kaidan opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling. Nothing in the room stirs. The gravity well is still and quiet. When he takes a breath his lungs ache.

Everything aches.

A tear beads at the corner of his eye and rolls down his cheek.

He listens to the silence, the weight sitting on his chest making every breath an effort he doesn’t have the energy for. But he doesn’t have a choice.

He has to get up. Shepard died, and Kaidan has to get up.

~

The smell of bacon hits before he gets to the bottom of the stairs. His stomach turns a little, the brief return of appetite he’d had yesterday gone as quickly as it had come. But the shaking hands aren’t going to go away if he keeps skipping meals. When he reaches the living room the sizzle of the griddle joins the smell of the bacon, and Kaidan slows to a halt, a rock settling in his gut.

The back door bangs open and Kaidan jumps as his mother walks in without noticing him. His father looks over his shoulder at her from his spot by the stove.

“Hey, you. Pancakes are almost ready. Think I heard Kaidan moving around upstairs.”

“Oh, pancakes.” She wipes her hands on her jeans and heads straight for Kaidan’s father, kissing his cheek before grabbing some plates out of the cupboard and digging some maple syrup out of the pantry while Kaidan stands rooted to the floor, heart beating faster, breath coming shorter.

Shepard’s voice whispers in his ear from years ago on Arcturus. _You better be right about these pancakes, Lieutenant._

His parents continue moving about the kitchen, his mother saying something about the horses, his father nodding and flipping the pancakes while he half listens, blissfully unaware how effortlessly they’re living out the future Kaidan would never have.

What would Sam have looked like with a few more decades on his brow? Silver at his temples? Would they have come back here, like Kaidan’s mother had hinted, so she could have at least one son who took an interest in her horses?

All of his time with Shepard had been spent monitoring biofeeds, fabricating suit patches, hoping the next bullet wouldn’t find its way home. They’d fought together, survived together, and for a little while, they’d loved together, all because of a fucking stack of pancakes on Arcturus early one morning when Kaidan had decided to help instead of keep walking.

He’d loved Sam with everything he had, silently for so long, out loud for nothing more than a heartbeat, but it had been enough to imagine _this_ , the future Sam had thought it would be safer not to think about because he didn’t believe he’d have one.

He’d been right. Goddammit, he’d been _right. We do this and we’re in for a world of hurt_ , he’d warned that morning by the bay, with rain coming down in torrents and everything they had out on the table. Kaidan hadn’t cared. All that mattered was Sam.

That’s _still_ all that matters and god help him he can’t make it _stop_.

The sound of his parent’s chatter funnels into white noise as he backs towards the door, knocking against the end table by the couch in his haste.

“Kaidan?”

He opens his mouth to answer but no sound comes out. He can’t breathe, he can never _breathe_ , there’s no room for air under this weight on his chest. He fumbles to get the back door open, sucking air into his lungs. When he finally gets outside a gust of wind hits him in the chest.

_(Sam.)_

_(I’ll be fine.)_

No. No. He’s not fine. He wasn’t _fine_ and Kaidan’s been drowning in that lie ever since. There’s no pancakes, no ‘hey, you,’ no _I choose you_ , because Sam took those two steps back to him and said it would be fine.

He stumbles along the dirt path down the hill leading to the barn, not paying attention to where he’s going until his chest hits the paddock fence. Out in the field, Echo looks up from grazing and swishes her tail.

Every breath he takes gets shallower and shallower, heart beating faster, _I’ll be fine_ roaring in his ears. He sinks down to the ground, back against the fence, fingers digging through the wilted, brown grass until they hit damp dirt and dig deep.

“Kaidan.”

He wants the voice to be Sam, would give _anything_ for that voice to be Sam, but it’s not. It’s his father, kneeling beside him, hand on his arm.

“I can’t breathe,” Kaidan gasps.

“Yes, you can,” he says, voice quiet and steady. It’s not Sam. It never will be again.

“Dad.”

“Listen to me,” his father says, putting himself right in Kaidan’s eyeline. “You _can._ ”

Kaidan shakes his head. He’s been telling himself that ever since the _Normandy_ went down. It’s a lie. A fucking lie, _all_ of it. “I can’t do this,” he chokes out, wheezing through the words. “I can’t breathe, I can never just _breathe._ ”

“You just have to do it one breath at a time,” his father says, grip on his arm tightening. “Focus on _this_ breath. Not the next one.”

Kaidan inhales, air rattling in his lungs like a punctured straw, Sam’s voice echoing in his ear. _We’ll do it together, okay?_

_No_ , he thinks. _We won’t. You’re dead. You_ left _me and I can’t do this without you._

“Breathe, Kaidan.”

_How many did you try to take?_ Kaidan wonders bleakly. _When did the next breath you needed not come? Did you die in the explosion like everyone says? Or did you fight for air, fight like you always fight, you always_ fight, _until there was nothing left and you couldn’t breathe?_

_I can’t breathe._

“Kaidan!”

Kaidan draws a sharp breath, the world coming back into focus just a little. His father’s hand is still on his arm, blades of dead grass and dirt still clutched in his fingers.

“Stay _here_ ,” his father orders. “Look at me. Next breath. Just this one. That’s all you need to do. _One_ breath.”

_(Stay with me, Kaidan. I’ve got you.)_

He takes another breath, still reedy and shallow, that iron weight sitting on his lungs refusing to move. Why does everything hurt so _much?_

“Okay,” his father says. “One more. Just one. Deep. All you need is one.”

“Dad,” he murmurs.

“You can do this.”

“I _can’t,_ ” he cries, wasting what little air he’s got on the words. “I can’t make it stop, I just want it to _stop_.”

His father tilts his head to stay in Kaidan’s eyeline. “I know it hurts. But you can take one more breath. _Do_ it, Kaidan. Give it all you’ve got.”

_One more._ Kaidan draws the air in, forcing it around the weight in his chest. Some of it gets through.

“Good. One more. Stay on _this_ breath. This is the one that matters.”

“Dad.”

“I’m right here, and I’m not leaving. Next breath.”

Kaidan nods, closes his eyes, and breathes again.

“Good. Again.”

Slowly, one breath after another, his heart rate begins to slow. The dirt under his fingers feels more solid, real.

“You’ve got this,” his father says, squeezing his arm. “You’re ok.”

Kaidan opens his eyes into the grey, watery light, surrounded by a quiet, unmoving gravity well, a stillness he can’t escape even though no one else even knows it’s there.

“No,” he says, digging his fingers deeper into the dirt. “I’m not.”

“No,” his father concedes after a moment. “You’re not.”

Kaidan tips his head back and looks up at the slate sky. “When I go to bed, I lay awake and hurt. If I sleep, it hurts more when I wake up. Then I go through the day just to do it all again.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “He’s not _here._ I need him to be here. There’s so much I have to do, so much I have to fix, but I’m so _tired.”_

“Stop thinking about what’s next,” his father says. “You’ve worried about what’s next your whole life, but that’s not your job right now. Your job is to survive, and right now that means just taking the next breath. Don’t think about tomorrow. Don’t even think about a few hours from now. Just take the next breath. Your mom and I are here to worry about the rest. That’s _our_ job. Yours is to keep breathing.”

_Just breathe_ , Shepard whispers.

_Not without you._

“You were right,” Kaidan says, voice wavering. “All of it was a mistake. We never should have…”

“Why?” his father asks. “You mean it was a mistake to love him? Love’s not like that, and you know it. You don’t get much of a say in who you love. I was the one who was wrong. Not you.”

Kaidan shakes his head. “He gave me every chance to walk away. I wouldn’t listen.”

“Kaidan,” his father says gently. “Just because it hurts now doesn’t mean it was a mistake. But it will be a mistake if you don’t let us help you get through it.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Kaidan confesses. “I see him everywhere. I hear him _everywhere_.”

“Only way out is through.”

Kaidan shuts his eyes and swallows, tears stinging the corner of his eyes. “I pinned Joker to a wall. On Arcturus. I hurt him.”

His father says nothing, just listens.

“He made some smartass comment. That’s what he _does_. And I snapped. Just like with Vyrnnus. I had him by the neck pinned against the wall, dark energy in my palm. I could have killed him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes.”

Kaidan shakes his head. “I’ve worked so hard to stay in control. Shepard had to goad me into trusting myself. One smartass comment at the wrong time and just like that – I threw it all away and became everything I’ve always been afraid of.”

A few joints pop as his father twists himself into a seated position and scooches over until they’re side by side. Behind them, Echo, now too curious to continue ignore the humans behaving so oddly, strolls towards the fence, head low, nostrils wide and blowing. When she reaches them, she noses the back of Kaidan’s neck. His father reaches through the fence with a hand and gently pushes her away.

“One moment of weakness when you’re exhausted, grieving, and in pain isn’t throwing anything away,” he says.

Kaidan laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. “It is when you’re a weapon.”

His sits up straighter, expression hardening. “You’re not a weapon. You’re a _person_. Your mother was wrong to say that all those years ago, and she’s regretted it every day since.”

Kaidan rests his hands on his knees and stares straight ahead. “I spent almost a decade after BAaT trying to feel human. And then I met Shepard…who judged himself on nothing more than what he could give to someone else. It made me so _angry_ that he couldn’t see his own worth any other way.”

A sad smile crosses his face that Kaidan doesn’t quite understand. “You saw the best in each other.”

_Did we?_ Kaidan wonders. _Or did we just see each other as we really are, and accept that was enough?_ Kaidan wipes his mouth. “Losing him…feels like I’ve lost me, too.”

“You always know who you are, Kaidan,” his father says. “Whether you realize it or not, deep down you do. But you’re in _pain_. The kind of pain that takes everything you’ve got to survive. As awful and overwhelming as it is, there’s no way around it. You have to let it hurt. It doesn’t get better any other way.”

Kaidan shakes his head slowly. One of the tears clinging to the corner of his eye finally shakes loose. He scrubs it hastily with a finger, which just spreads dirt across his cheek. “I’m not sure I’m strong enough to do that.”

“That’s why you have help.”

_Help._ How many times had he wanted to ask them for help over the years, and never figured out how? “We’ve never been good at helping each other, have we?” he asks with a wry smile.

“Well, we’re gonna learn.”

He wipes the dirt from his cheek with the sleeve of his shirt. “Think so?”

“I know so. Do you think a few years ago your mother would have stayed in the house after you ran out like that?”

A shallow laugh works its way out of his throat. “No. Probably not.”

“See? We’re learning.”

Kaidan cranes his neck towards the house. “Bet she’s having heart failure right around now.”

“I’ll worry about that. You stay focused on that next breath.”

“Thanks, Dad,” he murmurs.

His father puts a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to get you through this. I know you don’t believe it, but you don’t need to because that’s not your job. Your job is the next breath.”

Kaidan exhales. The weight on his chest is still there, but there’s air.

“Something about breakfast set you off,” his father says. “Do you know what it was? Home is supposed to be your safe place to land. Help us keep it safe for you, if you can.”

_(You better be right about these pancakes, Lieutenant.)_

“Pancakes,” he says, closing his eyes. “I can’t do pancakes. Please…don’t ask me to explain.”

His father nods. “No pancakes. Consider it off the menu. Anything else?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Then we’ll figure it out as we go.”

“Okay,” Kaidan says after a moment. His father gets up and offers him a hand. Kaidan takes it. When he’s on his feet he glances apprehensively at the house. “I…need a few minutes before I go back inside.”

“Take your time. I’ll handle Mom.”

As he starts walking to the house, Kaidan calls after him. “I failed the psych eval.”

His father pauses mid-stride and turns, slipping his hands in his pockets. “Don’t worry about that now. If someone needs to worry about it, I will. Okay?”

Kaidan nods. “Next breath.”

“Next breath,” his father agrees.

Kaidan waits until his father reaches the house and the door slams behind him. Slowly, he trudges up the hill and up the porch steps, coming to a halt in front of the swing where three years ago he and Shepard had sat and watched the sun rise. Then it had been spring, with all the apple trees in bloom, the pink and white blossoms glowing in the early light. This close to winter most of the leaves have fallen, just a few brown stragglers clinging stubbornly to bare branches that shift and creak in the chill breeze. Clouds hang thick and heavy in the sky, muting it to slate grey. No stellar sunrise this morning, and no indication the evening will be any better.

He sits down on the porch swing, the empty space next to him yawning like a void.

Three years ago he’d dozed off just before dawn and nearly missed the whole thing, woken up to find Shepard lazily pushing the swing back and forth with a foot, lopsided grin on his face as the sun crept over the horizon and lit the sky with color.

Forget the sunrise. Everything he wanted to see was in that smile.

He wraps his jacket tighter around him to ward off the cold. _I need you. Why did you leave me here?_

Only silence answers.

He puts his head in his hands, and lets it hurt.

~

When he finally comes back in the house his mother hovers near the door. Kaidan braces himself for a barrage of concerned questions, but instead she wraps him up in a hug and holds him tight. When she finally lets him go, she cups his cheek with a hand, then frowns and swipes at the line of dirt she finds there. She shoos him into the house with a crooked smile.

“Go get cleaned up.”

He glances into the kitchen as he heads through the living room to the stairs. It’s spotless. No trace of breakfast remains.

Maybe his father is right. Maybe they are learning how to help each other. Maybe he needs to let them try.

~

That evening his father heads into Summerland to play poker with a few fellow Alliance retirees, but not until after he and Kaidan sit at the kitchen table and take a look at the official paperwork from the Alliance about the conditions of his reinstatement. Kaidan hasn’t so much as read it, but his father skims it line by line.

When he’s done, he looks up at Kaidan over the datapad. “Let me make a few calls, figure out the best way forward.”

“Dad,” Kaidan says, “You don’t have to—”

“I’m just going to figure out your options. Whether you want back on active duty or not.”

Kaidan falls silent. He hadn’t even voiced aloud yet his own doubt about going back. He hasn’t been willing to give that thought too much shape yet.

_Just focus on the next breath._

“Kaidan,” his father says, voice soft but firm. “Trust me.”

Kaidan nods.

“Ok.” He gets up. “Sure you don’t want to join me? If poker’s not your game they’ll go easy on you.”

He hides a small smile. “Maybe next time.”

His dad shrugs and grabs a coat before going out the door.

“Dad?”

He stops.

“Thanks for asking.”

“Any time, son.”

Kaidan stays at the kitchen table until the lights of the skycar disappear up the drive, then hauls himself to his feet and heads for the living room. His mother sits on the couch with her back against the arm rest, knees bent under a blanket, reading a book on a datapad. A half-empty glass of wine sits within her reach on the coffee table, the bottle nearby. A second glass sits empty and unused.

“Hey there,” she says, putting the datapad down and offering him a smile. She gestures to the empty half of the couch. “Keep me company?”

He sits with a sigh. “I’m not very good company, Mom.”

“Good or bad, it’s still your company.” She unfolds the blanket further and tosses him a corner so he can pull it over his lap.

He scoots a little closer to her in order to fit, then grabs the bottle of wine and fills the empty glass before topping hers off. “This is a setup.”

“A setup with wine,” she points out.

He raises the glass. She raises hers back. The bottle is one of the cherry wines. Kaidan’s always been more partial to the redcurrant, but this one’s got a nice flavor to it. He rolls it around on his tongue before leaning back against the couch and closing his eyes.

“Been a long time since you and I had a PJ party,” she says.

Kaidan cracks an eye open, corner of his mouth crooking in a smile. “Forgot all about those.”

“Not me,” she declares. “One of the few bright spots during Dad’s deployments.”

He tilts his head thoughtfully. In all these years, he’s never really thought to put himself in her shoes, what it must be like to have your life dictated by a military you never signed up for. All those times over the years he watched Shepard risk his life, Kaidan was always there to look out for him. Bring him home.

_(except one)_

It must have been a special kind of hell for his mother to wait and wonder if she’d ever see his father again every time he walked out the door.

“You must have been lonely,” he says.

She pokes his thigh with a toe. “Nah. I had you. That imagination of yours was hard to keep up with. One minute you were fighting dragons, the next you were exploring new planets and meeting aliens. Sometimes you were a pirate. Once I made the mistake of thinking you were a _sea_ pirate, not a _space_ pirate, and I don’t think you’ve ever been more disappointed in me your whole life.”

He huffs. She smiles. There’s something just a little bittersweet to it. He takes another sip of wine.

“You’ve had a rough day,” she observes.

He forces a laugh. “Yeah. I guess you could say that.”

“You know we just want to help you, Kaidan. We love you. We just want to _help._ ”

He almost tells her he’s fine. He’ll be fine. But the way his chest tightens, the lump that immediately forms in his throat and the burning at the corner of his eyes make that the wrong answer tonight, no matter how much he wants it to be the truth.

_Just take the next breath._

“I don’t know how to do this,” he murmurs, running a thumb across the corner of his eye.

“I don’t either,” she admits.

Kaidan looks at her in surprise. Not the answer he expected.

She gives him a wry smile. “I’ve been beside myself since you got here. This may come as a surprise to you, but I like to fix things.”

He huffs. “You’re right. I’m shocked. I never would have guessed that about you.”

Her smile deepens, but then it fades. She swirls the wine in her glass. “This is something I can’t fix.”

“Yeah. Wish you could, though.” His whole life he’s shrugged off her insistence on solving a problem instead of just listening to it. Now he’d give anything if she’d just tell him what to do. He takes a sip of the wine, thinks of those few stolen moments with Shepard in the conference room on the _Normandy_ the day before the ship died. Before Shepard died. When they were still two people just hoping for a future they’d never get to have.

“He liked you, you know.”

“Did he?” she says, pleased. “Clearly he had good taste.”

Kaidan picks at a loose thread on the blanket, a smile threatening the corner of his lips. “Told me you were sending him extranet articles. Blew his mind. He…liked that you thought of him as family. Meant a lot to him.” The knot in his chest tightens.

_Just get to the next breath._

He inhales through his nose, trembling on the exhale. His mother watches him, expression soft.

“You can talk about him, you know. If you want to.”

Kaidan shifts uneasily, then directs his gaze into his glass before taking a sip.

“Kaidan,” she prods. “Have you ever just…talked about him? To anyone?”

He swallows and shakes his head. “I couldn’t.”

She leans forward and puts a hand on his knee. “But you can tell me. You loved him in silence for a long time, I’m betting. I can’t even imagine what that was like. So _tell_ me about him. I want to know all the things I missed.”

A lump forms in the back of his throat. Tears sting the corners of his eyes. “I…”

She pats his knee and leans back against the arm of the couch again. “You don’t have to. Just know that if you want to…I’d like to hear it. I always figured if you fell in love with someone they’d have to be special. That’s the kind of person I’d like to know better.”

Kaidan closes his eyes. _Know better._ Shepard was part of him in ways he doesn’t know how to explain. Without him there’s no wash of static under his skin. No whisper in the gravity well. Everything shifted and moved when Sam was close by, and it wasn’t something anyone else could see. It just _was._ And it was theirs.

A few minutes later he opens his eyes. His mother has gone back to reading on her datapad, not expecting anything more from him. He can’t blame her. He’s said nothing since he came home. He’s said nothing since it happened.

He’s never said anything.

When he speaks, it’s soft. Hoarse. He fumbles the words and has to start again. But he gets them out.

“I could feel it when he walked into a room.”

She sets the datapad down in her lap and looks up at him, expression attentive, hopeful even.

Kaidan twists his fingers in his lap, turning the words over in his head a dozen times before giving voice to them. “Biotics put out a…field. It’s hard to explain. But I know when there’s another biotic nearby because I can sense it. Every field is different. Kind of like the markings on a horse. Any time he came close to me I could feel it under my skin.”

“That sounds…powerful.”

“It…was. And he always fidgeted with the gravity well. He couldn’t be still to save his life. If you left him alone in an empty room, he’d have turned his own shirt into a pile of thread by the time you let him out. He said it was a problem when it came to being an officer. Not a lot of decorum in wearing out the deck plates because you can’t stop pacing.”

“Seems like he overcame it,” his mother says with a raised eyebrow.

Kaidan nods. “His biotic mentor told him if he couldn’t hold still, at least make it invisible. So he started channeling all that nervous energy into the gravity well. Instead of chewing his fingernails he basically tied gravity in knots. Without him everything feels so…still.” Kaidan stops. Swallows. He doesn’t need to see the empty space where Shepard should be. It’s in the stillness that follows him _everywhere_.

He draws in a shaky breath. “Biotics were part of him in ways they’ll never be for me. I use them as a tool. For him they were just…an extension of himself. I was in awe of him all the time.”

A sad smile crosses her face. “You were in awe of more than just the biotics. I could see it in your face.”

Kaidan huffs. “That obvious, huh?”

“I like to think I still know few things about you.”

He gazes at the wine in his glass. “You’re right. I was in awe of a lot more than the biotics.”

“Tell me.”

“I loved his smile,” Kaidan says softly, running a wistful thumb across his temple. “He would look at me with this grin on his face and I’d forget how to breathe.”

His mother smiles. “He loved your laugh.”

Kaidan glances at her, startled. “How…?”

“We talked when you were out with Dad taking care of the wine before the gala,” she says, readjusting her knees. She puts a contemplative finger to her chin. “I believe the way he put it was…you have the kind of laugh that made even the worst ground mission feel like a good day.”

Tears sting the corner of his eyes. “He said that.”

She nods and takes another sip of wine, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Yes, he did.”

_Sam._

“Well. He told _me_ that all you talked about was what a card shark I am. Which I’m not,” he adds.

Her eyebrow raises in amusement. “I don’t believe you.”

“You’ll take his side on that,” Kaidan says with a chuckle.

“I will, actually. I bet if Dad took you to one of his old fart card nights you’d put all of those codgers right on their ass, and I’d pay to see it.”

Kaidan takes a long, slow sip of wine, draining the glass. Then he wiggles his eyebrow. “I could.”

She smacks the side of the couch and laughs. “I _knew_ it. Every mother’s supposed to think her child is pure and perfect, but I’ve lived with the Alliance Navy and all her spawn too long to buy into that bullshit. Knew you had a less reputable side to you somewhere.”

He smiles, really smiles, for the first time in days. Weeks, maybe.

“First time I played poker with Shepard I wiped the floor with him, in front of his entire squad of marines.”

“To show them he was human.”

He tilts his head, puzzled. “Yes, exactly.”

“He told me that too,” she says with a wise nod. “He knew that’s why you did it. He respected you for it.”

“He never said anything,” Kaidan murmurs. The ache in his chest throbs harder. What else had Shepard thought but never said? What things would he never know?

She reaches for the bottle of wine, refills her glass, then offers it to him. “Do you know what else he told me?”

He shakes his head. The hand holding the bottle shakes, splashing wine over the edge of the glass and onto the blanket. Before he can get up to find something to blot it up she holds up a hand and gestures for him to stay put.

“This is more important than some spilled wine,” she informs him.

He sets the wine bottle back down and wipes his eye with the back of his hand. “What else did he say?”

“That he wished he could see the galaxy through your eyes,” she says, voice soft. “He thought if he could, it might seem like a better place.”

Kaidan puts his fist to his mouth to stifle the sound in his throat.

“Kaidan,” his mother says, hesitant now. “I knew. In Vancouver. I knew you weren’t together.”

He closes his eyes until he gets control of his voice. “Joker said something that made me suspect as much.”

“When I met your crewmates for dinner that one night, they didn’t see me come in. I overheard them talking.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

She leans forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you dare. Your crew saw the same thing your dad and I saw. We all just…wanted you to be happy. _Both_ of you. Just because you hadn’t said out loud to each other how you felt didn’t make it any less true.”

_You’re talking about it like it only changes if you name it,_ Joker had told him. _Pretending it’s not real doesn’t make it any less real._

She squeezes his shoulder. “Kaidan. The man I talked to was _deeply_ in love with you. I knew it three years ago when he came out here with you. I knew it six weeks ago in Vancouver. I know it _now_.” She lets him go and leans back against the couch. A smug smile creeps across her face as she takes another sip of wine. “And I was _right_. I saw you two on the balcony that last morning.”

Kaidan nearly chokes. “Right. The balcony. I didn’t, uh, know we had an audience.”

She grins.

“Does Dad know about all this?”

She shakes her head. “Our secret.”

Kaidan exhales. “Three years ago. How did you know?”

“The porch swing,” she says with a thoughtful cant of her chin. “The morning you two sat outside to watch the sunrise. I was up early to take care of the horses and saw you out there. You were asleep on his shoulder.”

“I tried to stay awake,” he recalls. “He was dead set on seeing an Earth sunrise. He’d never...just watched one before.”

“Well, he did that morning. Only it wasn’t in the sky. _You_ were the sunrise, Kaidan. He couldn’t take his eyes off you. That’s how I knew.”

Kaidan drops his head into his hands. This time he can’t stop the strangled sob in his throat. His mother shifts on the couch to slide closer to him and starts rubbing slow circles onto his back, just like she used to do when he was a kid.

“I loved him,” Kaidan says, voice hoarse. “I loved him with everything I had. For years. We finally…we _finally_ had the courage to say it out loud, and Mom _…_ ”

“I know,” she says softly.

“I loved him. I _still_ love him. I don’t know how to stop and it’s _killing_ me _._ ”

She surrounds him with her arms. Kaidan leans his head against her, sides heaving as he gives in and lets it all go. She traps him close and rests her chin on his head. He waits for the platitudes, the empty words of encouragement, the assurances that the love would someday be worth the hurt. But she doesn’t.

She just lets it hurt.

And it hurts. It _hurts_. All it does is _hurt._

But he keeps breathing. One more breath.

Just one more.

Another breath.

He’s still breathing.

Shepard died.

But Kaidan keeps breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a tough one for me, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading it and keeping me company. :) 
> 
> I'm taking a break from this story just through the holidays, so updates will resume most likely in January '21. In the meantime, expect some more [winter prompts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27924262/chapters/68383738), and maybe a little more [Cantata](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26701675/chapters/65133250).

**Author's Note:**

> [The Fugue Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3qoSTgJxWtzBAFlqObb93F?si=5OwPZjk_SAyD3R6ExrwJZA)
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! You can find me on tumblr at swaps55.tumblr.com. I share snippets, write prompts and in general have a lot of mShenko feelings.


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